La Défense, nearly 50 years of history with street art

Upon discovering the Zoo Art Show exhibition at La Défense, Manauly Briquet made no secret of her surprise. This event project manager, originally from Brest and visiting the capital, hadn't expected to find such a concentration of urban art in the heart of Europe's leading business district.

Installed since June 2025 in the Maison de La Défense, an unoccupied office building located near the Grande Arche, the exhibition brings together the creations of nearly 400 graffiti artists, painters and calligraphers. Tags, brightly colored paintings, three-dimensional installations and works usually shown in galleries occupy four floors, from floor to ceiling.

"I never would have imagined finding street art here! In the Marais, in a cultural center in the heart of Paris, okay, but not here at all," confides the visitor.

A long history between La Défense and art

Art has nonetheless held an important place in La Défense since the late 1970s. The district is home to several monumental works, including Alexander Calder's Red Spider and Joan Miró's Fantastic Figures . Temporary events, such as the contemporary art trail Les Extatiques, have further extended this cultural presence.

The encounter between this artistic universe and graffiti dates back to the early 1980s. The term "street art" was not yet used to designate an essentially clandestine practice.

"Today, it has become a commercial phenomenon in which many styles of contemporary art can be found. But in La Défense, it all starts with graffiti," explains the artist Darco, present at the Zoo Art Show alongside Shuck2.

Transport as the first gallery

Originally from Yvelines and Nanterre respectively, Darco and Shuck2 are among the first graffiti artists in the Île-de-France region to have adopted "the art of drawing one's name". Originating in the United States, this practice spread to several European cities in the late 1970s before taking root in Paris and its suburbs.

The railway lines in western Paris then became preferred canvases. Despite the illegal nature of these interventions, they offered artists relatively isolated spaces to paint, while ensuring significant visibility to travelers.

“We used to paint all over western Paris, mainly on railway lines. It wasn’t very common at the time, but we could be undisturbed while reaching a fairly wide audience,” Darco recalls.

The artist co-founded FBI in 1986, a group of graffiti artists that later became an international collective. With its train stations, underground metro and bus stations, and numerous technical spaces, La Défense has gradually established itself as a meeting point for this artistic scene.

An "open-air gallery" for young people in western Paris

For Shuck2, who discovered graffiti in 1987 within the Black Dragons, La Défense was also a leisure place frequented by young people from neighboring municipalities.

"There was an ice rink and nightclubs. For the young people from Mantes-la-Jolie, Poissy or Cergy who came here, seeing the graffiti and tags from the RER A was like crossing a kind of open-air gallery," he says.

Works visible from transport then contribute to the spread of graffiti and its claimed values: freedom of expression, aesthetic research and fraternity between artists.

The Zoo Art Show extends this story

This historical dimension played a role in Antoine Roblot's decision to establish the Zoo Art Show in La Défense. Created in Lyon in 2018, the project has already attracted nearly 150.000 visitors to the former office building, according to its founder. Its opening has been extended twice.

The public establishment Paris La Défense, owner of the Maison de La Défense, is delighted with this attendance. For Franck Boucher, its director of attractiveness, the exhibition perpetuates a "long-standing love affair between La Défense and street art".

Since 2015, the institution has also supported the creation of artworks in the parking lots and tunnels of the district. It also makes the plaza and the spaces located under the slab available to host exhibitions and performances.

Initially practiced clandestinely on transport infrastructure, graffiti has gradually become part of the neighborhood's official cultural programming. The installation of the Zoo Art Show in a vacant office building illustrates this transformation, while also providing a new, temporary use for a building awaiting redevelopment.