FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA MURAL #1 – CUIDAD SIN SUEÑO/NOCTURNO DE BROOKLYN BRIDGE

2011
CAMILLE PERROTTET, designer/lead artist
JANE WEISSMAN, project coordinator/artist
Principal artists: Patricia Quijano Ferrer, Jules Hollander, Nick Pelafas, Kayla Welbanks
Graffiti artist: Optimo Primo
Artists: Hagar Aviran, Valeria Carboni, Ellen Frank, Nyssa Frank, Mike Garcia, Abi Roberts, Alana Salcer

Starr Street between Wyckoff & Irving Avenues, Brooklyn, NY
12’ x 145’, acrylic on brick  

Photos © Jane Weissman, Camille Perrottet

This is the first of four Federico García Lorca Murals — a three-year project begun in 2011 to celebrate the multiculturalism of the people of Bushwick, Brooklyn, a neighborhood primarily inhabited by people of Latino heritage as well as young emerging artists. The murals were inspired by the poem Sleepless City / Brooklyn Bridge Nocturne by Spanish poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca (1898-1936). Each mural includes a stanza from Lorca’s poem, in both Spanish and English translations, as well as a feature of the poet’s face — in this mural, his eyes.

Lorca lived in New York for nine months from June 1929 through March 1930, sharing the loneliness and alienation experienced by immigrants new to the city. These feelings are expressed in this and his other poems written during his sojourn and posthumously published as A Poet in New York (in 1940). English and Spanish versions of the poem can be found at here and here.

If Artmakers initiated the Federico Garcia Lorca Murals – most community murals are commissioned by neighborhood organizations wanting to impart a message to the local population – it is Bushwick’s residents and workers who determined a major design element in each mural. Here, residents and workers are represented by the flags of their native countries. 

Additional photographs and information about The Federico García Lorca Murals can be found here.