Step Back! (7 Photos)

Seven works that need some distance

Shark Toof’s giant shark in St. Petersburg, Florida, opens its jaws right above a barred doorway. Like the other six works here, it makes the most sense once you step back and see it with its surroundings.

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🦈 Untitled Shark Mural — By Shark Toof in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA 🇺🇸

Three girls run past as the shark’s jaws stretch over the arches. The SHINE mural directory dates the work to 2015, places it on the east wall of the State Theatre building at 687 Central Avenue and gives its size as 55 feet wide and 33 feet high.

💡 Nerd Fact: Shark Toof used close to 100 cans of spray paint over four days. When the mural was finished, he stood in the grated doorway below the jaws and joked: “See? Now I’m in a shark cage!”

📷 Photo: Dave Lee

More: Shark Art by Shark Toof

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🔱 “Neptuno del Puntón” — By Luis Arencibia in Telde, Gran Canaria, Spain 🇪🇸

Neptune raises his trident on a rock just off Melenara Beach in Telde, and here the surf reaches almost to his waist. Gran Canaria’s official tourism site places him in front of the lookout at the end of the Taliarte promenade and dates the inauguration to September 1, 2001.

💡 Nerd Fact: In November 2010, the waves tore off Neptune’s right arm and trident. In April 2017, Telde Actualidad reported that the repair would add an internal structure to the arm, so it would not break again under the constant pounding of the waves.

More: Neptuno del Puntón in Gran Canaria

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🔭 Spyglass — By 3Steps in Wetzlar, Germany 🇩🇪

The two tunnel openings are the lenses of a giant pair of binoculars, gripped by painted hands. Walk through, and you are inside them. 3Steps’ own archive lists the work as Spyglass in Wetzlar, a city known for optics.

💡 Nerd Fact: 3Steps is not one artist but a trio: the twins Kai H. and Uwe H. Krieger and Joachim Pitt, who founded the crew in Giessen in 1998, according to the collective.

More: Pure Joy (10 Photos)

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🐍 Riding the Snake — By SCAF in Lorraine, France 🇫🇷

A purple snake coils across the corner of an abandoned room, tongue out, and a man sits on its head as if riding it. From this angle, the wall stops reading as a wall.

💡 Nerd Fact: SCAF is the artist name of Pierre Bertolotti, who began painting graffiti in 2002. The letters stand for “Super Conneries À Faire,” roughly “super crazy things to do,” according to Street-Artwork’s artist profile.

More: 26 Amazing 3D Paintings by SCAF!

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✈️ Plane Crash into the Storm — By Nikolaj Arndt in Germany 🇩🇪

A white plane has broken through the pavement and plunges into a storm-lit blue void, with lightning below and cracked asphalt around the edges. Visitors watch from behind the barriers, on the same flat floor.

💡 Nerd Fact: Arndt has competed in street-painting contests since 2008. He has taken part in the Wilhelmshaven street art festival five times and won first place in its 3D category in 2012, 2013 and 2018.

More: This Feels Too Real (22 Illusions by Nikolaj Arndt)

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🏘️ A Town Square on a Parking Lot Wall — By Rober Bece in Santa Marta de Tormes, Spain 🇪🇸

Painted houses, balconies and a cobbled square open up behind a real parking lot, and the white parking lines lead straight into the scene. Rober Bece’s large mural covers a wall in the parking lot next to the town hall on Plaza de España.

💡 Nerd Fact: The mural pays tribute to the town’s shops and hospitality businesses, Salamanca Diario reported. The town council inaugurated it on January 30, 2025, according to Salamanca24Horas.

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🧍 “No Triv” — By NemO’s in Bonito, Italy 🇮🇹

A pale giant with bulging eyes covers the side of a house, pierced by red-and-white striped straws. The straws stand for drills: NemO’s painted it in 2015 against oil drilling plans in Irpinia, Collettivo Boca explains.

💡 Nerd Fact: The figure’s skin was made from pages of Il Sole 24 Ore, and the eyes from phone-book pages of villages facing drilling plans, according to Google Arts & Culture.

More: 9 Street Art Murals by NemO’s

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Which one is your favorite?