With her head tilted upwards, Sophie and her granddaughter Elsa watched the artwork come to life. In front of them, in late April 2026, artist Seth and his two assistants were creating a new monumental fresco on the south facade of the apartment building at 2 rue Émile Deslandres in the 13th arrondissement, towering fifteen meters high. Between touch-ups, the team descended from the cherry picker. Sophie seized the opportunity and stepped forward: “Hello sir, I’m a fan! Bravo for everything you do, and thank you!”
A District Transformed: Two Decades of Artistic Evolution
For nearly 20 years, the artist has been a key figure in the district’s transformation. The 13th arrondissement has changed its face and is now an international reference for street art. The result of collaborative work between artists and municipal teams, the project shows no signs of stopping: several works emerged between March and April, and many more are planned.
For Seth, whose real name is Julien Malland, the story began in Buttes-aux-Cailles, an open-air pavilion of human-sized street art and a playground for emblematic artists like Miss.Tic and Jef Aérosol since the 1980s. In 2013, Seth was invited by the local art event, Les Lézarts de la Bièvre, to create a series of works in the streets of the 13th. Residents then discovered his style and universe, characterized by figures often seen from behind, frequently children, harmonizing with dreamlike worlds.
On that occasion, he first invested the facade of 2 rue Émile Deslandres with a girl perched on an umbrella. However, more than any other pictorial work, street art is subject to the vagaries of the city: his original work, depicting a little girl kneeling on an upturned umbrella, was covered during insulation work. But Seth was commissioned to replace it, hence his return to the site thirteen years later. This time, he unveiled a little girl on a swing connected to a cluster of colorful balloons, reminiscent of the movie Up.
“The fact of putting children, especially without faces, allows everyone to identify,” explains the artist, who claims to uphold principles of “openness to the world, to others, to the city,” but “without having a very clear message, like a press drawing. The idea is to leave room for interpretation.”
In April and March, no less than four new monumental frescoes were created in the 13th arrondissement: in addition to Seth’s, Californian artist El Mac unveiled a large portrait at 19 place Jeanne-d’Arc, as did Parisian painter Hom Nguyen at 85 rue Brillat-Savarin, while artist Add Fuel covered the walls of 140 boulevard Auriol with a work inspired by Hispano-Portuguese tiles, similar to two others he had created on the same axis in 2019.
It is difficult to know the exact number of frescoes currently visible in the 13th, between the smaller formats, those less visible to the public, or those that may have been erased. “There are perhaps 70, 80… Even I’ve lost count!” jokes Mehdi Ben Cheikh, director and founder of Itinerrance, one of Paris’s first galleries specializing in street art. The gallery was born in 2004 when the young plastic arts graduate chose a district “that no one knew” at the time in the art world, “rather than a small gallery in Saint-Germain-des-Prés or the Marais,” he smiles.
From Local Vision to Global Recognition
Now indispensable in the field, Mehdi Ben Cheikh is one of the initiators and orchestrators of the monumental street art dynamic in the 13th, thanks to the timely support of the district’s mayor, Jérôme Coumet. “He came to all our openings, and one day he followed me on a project in Seine-et-Marne, in Montry,” in 2009, where many houses began to be adorned with street art, explains the gallerist, “I told him I wanted to do the same on the scale of the arrondissement. He liked it.”
For the left-wing mayor, it was obvious. “Art has always been a personal passion; I had a Kandinsky poster in my room when I was young. But it’s not just a personal inclination. From the first frescoes, we saw that they resonated with their audience,” recounts Jérôme Coumet.
The 2010s were pivotal: American artist Shepard Fairey, known as Obey, created his first fresco in the arrondissement, Rise Above Rebel, followed by two others in June 2016, one of which, measuring 15 meters, became the sole symbol of the 13th as the beating heart of monumental street art in Paris: the Marianne surrounded by the words “Liberté égalité fraternité,” in homage to the victims of the November 13 attacks.
But the artistic effervescence is not limited to star creations. In 2013, the Tour Paris 13 project, an ephemeral museum of 4500 m² installed in a building destined for demolition in a transforming BNF district, was invested by more than 100 artists. Since then, the walls of the arrondissement have continuously welcomed new works.
“Today, we have a museum collection; it’s an open-air museum.” – Jérôme Coumet, Mayor of the 13th arrondissement.
A Model of Accessible Public Art
According to the mayor, these creations do not burden the municipal budget. “We do this very economically: most artists are simply compensated; we wouldn’t have the means to pay them.” The compensation amount depends on the artist but is “around 2000 to 3000 euros,” he explains. For the rest: the social landlords of the buildings finance the cherry pickers, Leroy Merlin (located on the border with Ivry) finances the acrylic paint, and the company Montana Colors provides the spray paints.
Today, more and more artists want to create frescoes of this scale in the 13th. The district has also earned its stripes in the largest international contemporary art institutions: “a friend went to MoMA (the Museum of Modern Art in New York) and saw that in the list of recommended sites abroad there was boulevard Paris 13,” the nickname for the artistic project on boulevard Vincent Auriol.
It is around this axis that the strategy for creating frescoes is now concentrated, with a project to diversify artistic formats: dynamic lighting has recently been installed under the elevated metro walkways, and discussions are underway for statue installations.
The 13th arrondissement of Paris stands as a testament to the power of public art to transform urban landscapes and foster community engagement. What began as a local initiative has blossomed into a globally recognized cultural phenomenon, drawing visitors and artists alike. The collaborative spirit between the artists, the local government, and the community has created a vibrant, ever-evolving canvas that continually redefines the city’s artistic identity. This ongoing transformation ensures that the 13th arrondissement will remain a dynamic and inspiring open-air museum for years to come.
Source: https://actu.fr/ile-de-france/paris_75056/paris-comment-le-13e-arrondissement-est-devenu-un-musee-a-ciel-ouvert-du-street-art-renomme-jusqu-a-new-york_64208228.html
