Did you know that the first recorded street art painting competition took place in London, in 1906? And what do the artist Leonardo Da Vinci, the Lascaux prehistoric cave paintings, and sidewalk art have in common? You are about to find out in this article!

You’d think that street-paintings were developed in the 21st century, but the truth is that we don’t exactly know when street art became a thing. Inspired by the cave paintings most probably, people transformed pavements into their canvas centuries ago. It takes a whole lot of creativity to see beauty in a piece of cement, I’d say. But feeding this inside “monster” called the need for self-expression was not necessarily the reason caveman used to paint.
If today we have the history books where we can read about our ancestors, back then people would transmit information to their successors through the cave paintings. Remember the pyramid paintings? Same thing. The Pharaoh wanted everyone to know what a great life he led.

Sidewalk art has evolved greatly since the old Age of Paleolithic. Moving from the hidden caves to the public space, the most talented artists have been making a full-time living from pavement art alone. We know for sure that Shakespeare makes references to the so-called “screevers”(from the Latin ‘scribere’ for ‘write’) denoting sidewalk artists. Five centuries later, in 1980, the German artist Kurt Wenner, uses the technique called “anamorphic art” for the first time on the Classical Italian Architecture in Rome. This technique makes paintings appear in proper perspective only when viewed from a specific angle. It was, indeed, used before that by the illustrious painter Leonardo Da Vinci, but never on the walls and streets of a city.

Similar to anamorphic art, 3D pictures blow your mind away when you stand at a certain point from them. They can be either beautiful and pleasant to look at, or really terrifying. In this collection, we have put together a list featuring 31 amazing 3D street art paintings you definitely need to see. You’ll find works of famous street artists such as Manfred Stader, Edgar Mueller, Julian Beever, Tracy Lee Stum, and others.