Based, in Bologna, Italy, Blue creates politically charged murals, borrowing visual inspiration from the Surrealists. Using house paint and rollers to draw human figures, Blue often comments on the exploitation of natural resources. Graffiti artists have long used video to document their ephemeral work, but Blu's videos thoroughly reinvent the practice. In his digital stop-motion films, he animates his figures frame by frame, and the drawings appear to come to life as Blue paints out each old image and creates a new one. —Mimi Zeiger

Photo by Blu. This story originally appeared in the September/October 2011 issue of AFAR magazine.