19 Murals by Eduardo Kobra

You can recognize an Eduardo Kobra wall from half a block away. History arrives in color: David Bowie, Pelé, Lincoln, Einstein, a school façade transformed into a towering library, and a firefighter carrying the weight of a city.

These 19 murals stretch across Brazil, the United States, Sweden, Russia, and Italy. Famous faces draw you in, but the real thread is public memory: who a city celebrates, what it refuses to forget, and what it hopes to become.

Meet Eduardo Kobra: the São Paulo muralist who makes history impossible to miss

Eduardo Kobra was born in Jardim Martinica, on the southern edge of São Paulo, in 1975. He began painting walls without permission as a teenager, later worked on signs and amusement-park scenery, and gained wider attention in 2007 with Muro das Memórias, a project that returned old photographs of São Paulo to the city’s streets.

That interest in memory never left. Kobra researches photographs, public figures, local stories, and the buildings themselves, then translates them to city scale through portraiture, sharp geometry, and blocks of saturated color. His official project archive also reveals a wider range than the famous faces suggest: peace walls, environmental protests, optical illusions, and images about reading, medicine, work, and migration.

His first mural outside Brazil was painted in Lyon in 2011. Since then, walls across five continents have carried his work. Some celebrate one person. Others ask an entire city to stop, look, and remember together.

Kobra paints history as if the city has just switched the lights on.

🔗 Follow Eduardo Kobra on Instagram, visit his official website, and explore his project archive

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💋 “The Texas Kiss” — Houston, Texas, USA 🇺🇸

Kobra returned to one of his best-known images in 2026 and gave it a Texas address. A cowboy and a woman meet in front of the Lone Star, reimagining the 1945 Times Square kiss as a 1,000-square-metre Houston mural. Street Art for Mankind identifies it as part of the 2026 Big Art. Bigger Change. program and places it at Texas Avenue and Caroline Street. Kobra framed the kiss as a wish for unity, respect, and peace.

💡 Nerd Fact: The source photograph became one of Life magazine’s best-known images, but it was not a cover photograph. It appeared inside the August 27, 1945 issue in a feature on victory celebrations.

📷 Photo by Charles Holt.

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📚 “Colégio Ser” — Sorocaba, Brazil 🇧🇷

At Colégio Ser on Rua Doutor José Aleixo Irmão, a school becomes a library tall enough to climb. Kobra’s project page records that he asked the public for Brazilian book recommendations, received about 4,000 suggestions, and placed the 150 most-mentioned titles on the wall. The child on the ladder turns reading into a physical journey: one rung, one book, one step higher.

💡 Nerd Fact: The final composition was preceded by about ten design studies. Kobra said the concept took roughly one month to develop, followed by 15 to 20 days of painting.

More: The Boy Climbing a Library of 150 Books

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⚡ “Ziggy Stardust” — Jersey City, New Jersey, USA 🇺🇸

David Bowie rises 180 feet up the side of the Cast Iron Lofts at 837 Jersey Avenue, wearing the lightning-bolt makeup of Aladdin Sane. Completed in 2016, the mural shifts from neighborhood landmark to skyline signal depending on how far away you stand. Jersey City’s mural program documents the work and its 180-foot scale.

💡 Nerd Fact: The lightning-bolt portrait is not taken from the Ziggy Stardust album sleeve. Brian Duffy photographed it for Bowie’s 1973 album Aladdin Sane.

More: See Kobra’s 180-Foot David Bowie in Full

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🎶 Luciano Pavarotti — San Pietro Magisano, Italy 🇮🇹

Pavarotti does not simply sing here; the music takes flight. Kobra painted the roughly 100-square-metre mural for LuceFest in 2024. Kobra explained that the Brazilian birds flying from the tenor’s mouth represent his voice and legacy continuing to travel around the world. The Calabria regional government describes San Pietro Magisano as an open-air museum with more than 100 works—a remarkable concentration in a village of around 300 people.

💡 Nerd Fact: Pavarotti’s major Metropolitan Opera breakthrough came as Tonio in Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment in 1972. Its aria “Pour mon âme” contains nine high Cs.

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🎩 Abraham Lincoln — Lexington, Kentucky, USA 🇺🇸

The seated figure from the Lincoln Memorial lands on the back wall of the Kentucky Theatre at 214 E. Main Street in a rush of geometric color. Completed on November 13, 2013, it arrived six days before the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. The posture remains monumental; the palette pulls Lincoln straight into the present.

💡 Nerd Fact: The Gettysburg Address survives in five known manuscript copies handwritten by Lincoln. The Library of Congress holds the Nicolay and Hay copies; the Nicolay text is considered the likely reading copy used at Gettysburg.

More: A Closer Look at Kobra’s 60-Foot Lincoln

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🎨 “Caipira Picando Fumo” — Itu, Brazil 🇧🇷

A giant spray can opens like a museum frame around Almeida Júnior’s 1893 painting Caipira Picando Fumo. The connection is local: Almeida Júnior was born in Itu, and Kobra now lives there. The mural rises on the side of the Edifício José de Oliveira at Praça Padre Miguel 119. Local reporting records the 2026 work at 25 metres high and 9.5 metres wide, made with about 200 spray cans for Kobra’s Arte fora do Museu project.

💡 Nerd Fact: In late-19th-century São Paulo art, “caipira” was more than a neutral description of rural life. The Pinacoteca describes the figure as a constructed social type tied to the state elite’s modernization project and to contemporary realism and naturalism.

📷 Photo by Marcia Marton.

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⚽ “Coração Santista” — Santos, Brazil 🇧🇷

This was a birthday tribute before it became a memorial. Kobra created the 800-square-metre wall in 2020 for Pelé’s 80th birthday on the façade of the Centro de Atividades Turísticas in Ponta da Praia, opposite the Santos fish market. The City of Santos documents the original occasion and the surrounding references to the port, trams, and Coffee Exchange.

💡 Nerd Fact: Pelé joined Santos at 15 and scored on his first-team debut in 1956. He spent the next 18 years at the club and helped it win 25 major titles.

More: Kobra’s 800-Square-Metre Tribute to Pelé and Santos

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☁️ “Um Mundo sem Guerra” — São Paulo, Brazil 🇧🇷

At Rua Platina 886 in Tatuapé, a girl reaches into the sky and paints a peace symbol into the clouds. The teddy bear in her other hand keeps the wish personal, while the scale makes it public. Kobra’s official text for Um Mundo sem Guerra describes it as a simple image built around one difficult hope: a future without war.

💡 Nerd Fact: The peace symbol began as a nuclear-disarmament emblem rather than a generic anti-war icon. Gerald Holtom designed it in 1958 by combining the semaphore positions for N and D, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament chose not to copyright it.

More: See Kobra’s Peace in the Clouds from Four Angles

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🚒 “The Braves of 9/11” — Manhattan, New York, USA 🇺🇸

Painted at 780 Third Avenue in 2018, this towering mural is based on Matthew McDermott’s photograph of FDNY firefighter Mike Bellantoni. The number 343 on the helmet honors the firefighters killed on September 11, 2001. Kobra says the color carries a second message: life, rebuilding, and beginning again.

💡 Nerd Fact: The source photograph was not posed. Mike Bellantoni later explained that he had knelt because his back hurt and said he felt guilty about being singled out when many other responders had done more.

More: The Story Behind Kobra’s 9/11 Firefighter

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🚲 “Genial é Andar de Bike” — São Paulo, Brazil 🇧🇷

In this now-lost mural, Albert Einstein rode straight toward viewers from a wall at Rua Oscar Freire 944. Kobra created the work in 2015 while São Paulo was fiercely debating bicycles and urban mobility, using Einstein to connect movement with curiosity, balance, and new ideas. A playful equation on the bicycle read “S2 = eu e vc².” In January 2018, the mural was painted over as the storefront began rotating work by other artists.

💡 Nerd Fact: The source photograph was taken on February 6, 1933, by Caltech trustee Ben Meyer at his home in Santa Barbara. It entered the Caltech Archives as a 1959 donation.

More: See Einstein Ride Across São Paulo

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🏅 Alfred Nobel — Borås, Sweden 🇸🇪

This wall rewarded the right viewpoint. At its former site on Södra Strandgatan 2, Kobra wrapped Alfred Nobel’s portrait and medal around a building corner so the medal appeared round from one precise angle. Painted for Borås’s first No Limit festival in 2014, the design let windows cut through the illusion. Current street-art documentation records the mural as removed, so photographs now provide its surviving view.

💡 Nerd Fact: The economics prize is not one of the five prizes named in Alfred Nobel’s will. Sveriges Riksbank established it in 1968 as a memorial prize, and the first award was made in 1969.

More: Kobra Turned a Building Corner Into a Nobel Medal

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🏙️ Oscar Niemeyer — São Paulo, Brazil 🇧🇷

The photograph shows Kobra’s original 2013 tribute to Oscar Niemeyer, a 52-metre-high mural on the Edifício Ragi Buainain at Praça Oswaldo Cruz. Kobra’s project page explains how forms from the Palácio do Planalto and Pampulha run through the architect’s face. After years of weathering, Kobra repainted and restored the mural in early 2026 for São Paulo’s 472nd anniversary.

💡 Nerd Fact: Niemeyer was the youngest member of the international Board of Design for the United Nations Headquarters. The built complex developed from the joint scheme 23/32, combining his proposal 32 with Le Corbusier’s proposal 23.

More: Kobra’s 52-Metre Tribute to Oscar Niemeyer

📷 Photo by Alan Teixeira.

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🩺 “Ciência e Fé” (“Science and Faith”) — São Paulo, Brazil 🇧🇷

On the InRad façade of Hospital das Clínicas at Av. Dr. Enéas de Carvalho Aguiar 255, a doctor’s hands meet in prayer while a stethoscope hangs from the white coat below. Kobra created the 200-square-metre mural for São Paulo’s 468th anniversary and described it as a rejection of the supposed conflict between science and faith.

💡 Nerd Fact: The mural’s host building is itself a medical landmark. According to FMUSP, InRad was inaugurated in 1994 and became Latin America’s first institution to use nuclear-medicine techniques; it was also the first in South America with high-dose-rate brachytherapy equipment.

More: Four Views of Kobra’s “Science and Faith” Mural

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👥 The People of Belo Horizonte — Belo Horizonte, Brazil 🇧🇷

No celebrity this time. On the Sesc Minas headquarters at Rua Tupinambás 956, Kobra filled a nearly 1,000-square-metre façade with local faces. He identified them as ordinary people, workers, and citizens of Belo Horizonte—a recognition of those who actually build the city. Completed in 2023, the stacked portraits take on another dimension at night, when the surrounding windows pull the mural into downtown Belo Horizonte.

💡 Nerd Fact: Belo Horizonte was built to replace Ouro Preto as the capital of Minas Gerais. It was inaugurated on December 12, 1897, after the settlement of Curral del Rei was remade as a planned republican capital.

More: Watch This Tower-Sized Portrait Come Together

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🩰 “Ballerina” (Maya Plisetskaya) — Moscow, Russia 🇷🇺

Kobra painted the Bolshoi ballerina at 16 Bolshaya Dmitrovka in 2013, shortly before her 88th birthday. The Moscow Times documented the work, titled Ballerina, as part of the Moscow Department of Culture’s Best City on Earth festival near the Bolshoi Theatre. Plisetskaya sits in costume with her pointe shoes visible, calm against the rays exploding behind her.

💡 Nerd Fact: Plisetskaya pushed for the creation of the 1967 ballet Carmen Suite because she wanted a new role she could call her own. She later danced it about 350 times, including 132 performances with the Bolshoi Ballet.

More: Two Views of Kobra’s Maya Plisetskaya Mural

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💋 “O Beijo” — Chelsea, New York City, USA 🇺🇸

Before Houston’s Texas version came this New York landmark. Kobra’s official archive records an 11-by-17-metre wall visible from the High Line at the former site near West 25th Street and Tenth Avenue. Painted in 2012, O Beijo rebuilt Alfred Eisenstaedt’s 1945 Times Square photograph in color. Crowds came to photograph it until the wall was painted over in 2016. The mural disappeared; the image kept traveling.

💡 Nerd Fact: Eisenstaedt was not the only photographer to record the kiss. U.S. Navy photographer Victor Jorgensen captured the same couple from another angle; his public-domain image, Kissing the War Goodbye, was published in The New York Times.

More: The Original Kobra Kiss Above New York’s High Line

📷 Photo by Daniel Albanese.

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✋ “Stop Wars” — Wynwood, Miami, USA 🇺🇸

Yoda lifts a protest sign and the message lands in two words. Painted during Art Basel in 2015, Stop Wars formed part of an 80-metre, block-long Wynwood wall. Kobra’s official archive places the Yoda panel beside Give Peace a Chance, portraits of Dalí, Basquiat, Frida Kahlo, and Warhol, and the environmental work The Fallen Angel. The borrowed movie icon makes the first joke; the instruction stays completely serious.

💡 Nerd Fact: Yoda’s face contains a deliberate Einstein reference. Creature designer Stuart Freeborn modeled the puppet’s eyes on Albert Einstein’s to emphasize intelligence.

More: Yoda’s “Stop Wars” Wall in Wynwood

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🏭 “CO2” — São Paulo, Brazil 🇧🇷

Project documentation identifies this work as CO2, a roughly 10-by-5-metre Greenpincel mural completed in 2011 at Rua Alvarenga 2400. Seven smokestacks carry national flags while a figure in a gas mask watches from the edge. A contemporary study reads the image as a protest against air pollution and the political inaction surrounding it. In Kobra’s own description, Greenpincel confronts deforestation, polluted rivers, predatory fishing, and other attacks on nature.

💡 Nerd Fact: The modern atmospheric CO₂ record began at Mauna Loa in March 1958 under C. David Keeling. It remains the longest record of direct atmospheric CO₂ measurements.

More: Kobra’s “CO2” Wall in São Paulo

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🎯 “Alta Mira” (“Belo Monte na Mira!”) — São Paulo, Brazil 🇧🇷

Painted in 2011 at Rua da Consolação 806, Kobra’s current São Paulo mural archive lists the work as Alta Mira. A red target closes over an Indigenous face. Below it, one changed word turns the name of the Belo Monte dam into an accusation: Belo Monstro, or “beautiful monster.” Contemporary photo documentation also circulated the mural as Belo Monte na Mira! Small beside Kobra’s later towers, it remains blunt and concentrated.

💡 Nerd Fact: The dam project was originally known as Kararaô. At the 1989 Altamira gathering, 19-year-old Tuíre Kayapó held a machete against the face of Eletronorte president José Antônio Muniz Lopes in protest; the project was later renamed Belo Monte.

More: Kobra’s “Alta Mira / Belo Monte na Mira!” Protest Wall

📷 Photo by Katia Brambilla.

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Which one is your favorite?