Eduardo Srur lives and works in São Paulo. He studied at the School of Fine Arts of the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation (FAAP), where he took classes with artist Nelson Leirner and photographer Eduardo Brandão. He began his career as a painter in the 1990s, receiving the Michelangelo Prize for Contemporary Painting at the São Paulo Cultural Center São Paulo (1996), the Scholarship Award at the FAAP Annual Arts Exhibition (1997), the São Bernardo do Campo Contemporary Art Salon Award (2002), an award at the 9th Santos Biennial (2004), and the Visual Arts Revelation Award at the Contemporary Art Museum in Americana (2003).
In the early 2000s, he began exploring and utilizing public space to develop installations using new materials and different visual languages, paving the way for the experimental production of urban interventions. Notable among his works is “Acampamento dos Anjos,” displayed on the facade of the largest abandoned hospital in South America, in São Paulo (2004).
He received awards for his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Paraná (2002) and the Santa Catarina Art Museum (2002). He exhibited in public spaces in Paris (2005) and took over the architecture of historic buildings in the French city of Metz (2005). Between 2005 and 2008, he participated in exhibitions in Switzerland, England, Slovakia, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and Croatia. He was invited to the Havana Biennial in Cuba.
In São Paulo, he strengthened his entrepreneurial side and carried out several large-scale urban interventions in the city’s landscape, appropriating bridges and overpasses, polluted rivers and reservoirs, public parks, and vacant lots. He installed dozens of kayaks manned by plastic mannequins in the polluted waters of the Pinheiros River (2006).
In 2008, he created sculptures in the shape of giant PET bottles along the banks of the Tiete River and intervened in monuments using life jackets. He suspended a replica of an imperial carriage 30 meters high on the cable-stayed bridge along the Pinheiros waterfront (2012). That same year, he built a giant maze out of solid waste in Ibirapuera Park. In 2013, he took over the city center with “Farol,” an installation featuring thousands of rats in the Anhangabaú Valley. At the same time, he organized happenings and political performances such as “A Arte Salva” in front of the National Congress (2011). His works utilize public space to draw attention to environmental issues and daily life in metropolises, always with the goal of expanding art’s presence in society and bringing it closer to people’s lives. Some of his projects promote social activities with children and the general public through workshops that share the artist’s creative process outside the academic setting with thousands of people. To spread his ideas, he gives lectures at schools and major global events such as TED and Sustainable Brands. In 2014, he published the book *Manual de Intervenção Urbana* and was named “Sustainable Citizen” by Catraca Livre for his body of work.
In 2017, at the invitation of curator Adelina Von Furstenberg, he participated in the “Acqua” exhibition in a public space in Geneva (Switzerland) to mark World Water Day. In Argentina, he navigated his PETS installation along the Paraná River, the Río de la Plata, and Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires during the 1st International Biennial of Contemporary Art of South America. In São Paulo, he took over the polluted Pinheiros River with the work “Pintado,” a monumental, itinerant intervention throughout the city.
An independent artist, Srur works in his studio in São Paulo, where he has built a personal collection over the course of his career that includes series of paintings, sculptures, multiples, photographs, watercolors, and prints.
He is the founder and owner of ATTACK Intervenções Urbanas, a company specializing in the design and production of special projects in public spaces that provides support for his artistic interventions.
