Since Russia’s invasion, there has been an outpouring of support for Ukraine in Poland, which has welcomed millions of refugees and where Ukrainian flags can be seen displayed across the country on windows, balconies and cars.
Meanwhile, street artists have also taken up the cause, using their spray cans and plenty of blue and yellow paint to denounce Putin’s war and express sympathy for the Ukrainian people.
A Ukrainian artist in exile – using the pseudonym Street Wind – titled the work above “2022 years after the birth of Jesus, Neptune destroys the ship of the Devil.” It depicts the Roman God Neptune wielding a trident shaped like the logo of the Ukrainian Defence Forces and carrying NLAW missiles and a “Holy Javelin” missile to use against Russia’s Moskva battleship.
The now-underwater pride of the Black Sea fleet is replete with skulls and missiles shaped like Russian Orthodox churches, a comment on how Putin has used religion to justify his (unholy) war against Ukraine.
This work, painted opposite Warsaw’s trendy Hala Koszyki, is already gone. The anonymous artist, who has painted many depictions of zombie Russian soldiers around the Polish capital, is sanguine about the short-lived nature of his work, telling Notes from Poland: “Most of the works do not exist at the moment; street art quickly disappears from the streets.”
by Kawu, Poznań
Alongside the now-iconic colours of the Ukrainian flag, images of Putin as a villain are common.
Though Poznań-based artist Kawu gained his 20,000 followers on Instagram for his fun paintings of 90s cartoon characters, his darkest and most detailed works are a depiction of Putin as Voldemort (above) with its counterpart showing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as Harry Potter (below) with a red “Z” on his forehead, replacing the lightning bolt scar of the fictional character.
by Kawu, Poznań
Szwedzki’s crude depiction of his cheeky eponymous cartoon character urinating on a serious black-and-white image of Putin (below), painted by collaborator REAL, insults the dictator too. “I want to humiliate him,” the street artist from Katowice told Notes from Poland.
“I like to play with words, so put-in put-out came quite naturally….We painted everything in two hours, in the centre of Katowice in the morning – we were in a hurry because we painted it illegally.”
by Szwedzki, Katowice
This ultra-realist greyscale depiction of a young Ukrainian woman wearing a garland (below) was painted by Pieksart in Kraków.
In a post on Instagram he wrote: “The only thing I can say now is that I’m pissed, scared and sorry at the same time… Pissed of politics. Scared of how quickly and dramatically people’s lives can change. Sorry for all the innocent people of Ukraine suffering from this unnecessary and unimaginable war. I want to encourage everyone to support and help however you can.”
by Pieksart, Kraków
Though typically street art is found in big cities, small-town artists such as Patryk Łukaszuk, based in Lębork, have expressed their sympathy for the suffering of Ukrainians too. His highly textured mural was painted on the second day of the war, inspired by the very first images of suffering children on those shocking days.
He told Notes from Poland: “This graffiti is my weapon against this aggression, as an opposition and showing the world of solidarity and unity with people who should not suffer the stigma of war.”
by Patryk Łukaszuk, Lębork
Main image: by Street Wind
All images courtesy of the artists
is a British freelance journalist based in Berlin. Alongside news and politics, he also writes about culture and can be followed on Twitter @derJamesJackson.
