January 2021
Everything goes, nothing persists, that being even truer for street art. Back in early February this year, I plunged briefly into cyberspace in search of cues about the fate of The Monument after my autumn 2019 visit to Reykjavík, and I had some luck. A couple of urban developer project companies’ websites had what are to this day my ‘last news’ about my most preferred urban art piece of Reykjavík, published roughly one year earlier, in January 2021. By then, the main building had been upgraded, the wall displaying the front-1 panel was demolished, and only the portion on front-2 of the wonderful work that had replaced Guido van Helten original murals was still visible.
Here you see, side by side, in the right, the area on a 2014 map with the original buildings, and, in the left, the planned new residential area:
And this is the planned site with my indication of the approximate locations of the now extinct front-1, front-2 and side-panel of van Helten work:
And the last pictures known to me still showing the replacement mural on panel 2, as published on January 2021:
