Just as BANKSY‘s “Wall and Piece” gave people an easy access to the street art world, the title ACTION PAINTING – BRINGING ART TO THE TRAINS (ISBN: 978-3-939566-25-0) gives outsiders a profound insight on the adventures, the techniques, the ethics and the passion behind these humorous, radical, sometimes political or straight typographical pieces of art.

All works presented in this book are no longer existent. Gone for good, washed off the side of the train they were painted on – sometimes only hours after their creation! What remains is a little photo. A last glimpse of what to create took much skills, courage, determination and the risk of paying big fines or even going to jail for it. The fate of that little photo is often to end up in a shoe box hidden for the constant fear of criminal prosecution.

The authors of ACTION PAINTING have brought many of these photos back to the light and have created the most comprehensive collection of art created on Europe‘s transit systems until today. They present the highlights of what has been painted in the past quarter century. The task had much of a treasure hunt, as it was a long chain of conspiratorial contacts which in the end lead to unmarked packages that would arrive, containing the sought-after photos.
216 color pages are showing the highlights of what has been rollin’on the tracks between Helsinki and Madrid in the past quarter century.

25 years ago, the release of the iconic book “SUBWAY ART” sparked the flame of painting trains on this side of the Atlantic. While train graffiti died in New York, it continues to flourish on Europe‘s trains and freed itself not only stylistically from its origins to create the most diverse forms of expressions. Many of those who had their first contact with art and typography at train depots are nowadays art directors or present their work in galleries worldwide. Some of their work even get sold at prices which are much more worth then the costs for cleaning they were forced to pay in the past.

It’s often shrugged off as vandalism and this pops up the question if this is art or not. A painted train might never make it to the Tate Modern in London, but it took a whole lot of artwork ability to let the work pictured in this book arise. Because of its accessible and structured chapters the book does not only give insiders a authentic insight in some of the best works ever done on trains.
Next time a painted train will pull into the railway station the reader of ACTIONPAINTING will recognize it in a different way.

The title comes out in May 2009 published by Publikat Verlag of Aschaffenburg. With their own intends and in cooperation with the big names from the scene of the past ten years they already published more than 30 titles concerning Urban Art which are internationally known.