Artist Bio:
PichiAvo is Juan Antonio Sánchez Santos (Pichi, b. 1977) and Álvaro Hernández Santaeulalia (Avo, b.1985), a duo of street artists from Valencia (Spain).
Recognised for their skill at creating connections between painting and sculpture in urban settings, they adopt a thoroughly innovative approach in their artistic fusions. A balanced combination of classical art and the most contemporary urban art can be identified in their work. From the outset PichiAvo shunned artistic individuality, joining forces to create an absolutely unique body of work using a conceptually urban idiom, both in the street and in the studio.
They trained in Fine Art and in Design and met on the graffiti art scene in Valencia, forming the PichiAvo duo in 2007. From that moment they worked on developing joint projects, pursuing an unremitting search for a style of their own. To achieve this they went through various stages as painters, focusing initially on skill and technique until they reached the point of needing to express themselves through what most defines them today: graffiti and classical art. They work both outside and inside the studio, in painting, sculpture and installation, embracing a wide and versatile range of material and painterly approaches.
In 2015 PichiAvo produced their first large mural in the North West Walls Festival in Belgium, having been invited by fellow artist Arne Quinze. This work launched their international career. From then on, they have carried out projects at some of the leading venues in international urban art, such as Wynwood Walls (2015) and the Hard Rock Stadium (2016), both in Miami, and the Houston Bowery Wall in New York (2017), where theirs was the first painting intervention by European artists. In 2019 they created a monumental 26m high sculpture for the Fallas Festival in Valencia and held their first major exhibition in a public art centre. In April 2019 they executed the second largest mural in the world in the city of Porto, in collaboration with the celebrated Portuguese artist Vhils.
PichiAvo’s career has attained artistic recognition and popularity on an international scale, establishing them among the most prominent street artists on the current urban art scene.
