Where to find Vienna's modern masters

“This was an extremely lifeless area. Nobody actually came down here,” says Nychos of the Danube Canal, which is flanked by walls of concrete spattered with colour. It’s hard to imagine it as “lifeless” as we pass a barrage of striking, complex images — wide-eyed cartoon faces, otherworldly creatures, hypnotic, interlocking letters.

Forget the baroque buildings and old world coffeehouses — this is the bright, gritty soul of Vienna expressed through street art. It’s a compelling modern-day juxtaposition to the palatial majesty traditionally associated with Vienna.

Nychos was one of the genre’s pioneers in the Austrian capital. He first started painting along the canal in 2005, the same year that alfresco bars Adria and Strandbar Herrmann opened, fast transforming the canal’s promenade into a carefree summer oasis with loungers, DJ sessions and cocktails.

Street art was an imaginative, fitting backdrop to this burgeoning nightlife culture, and it was propelled by the Viennese Wall (Wienerwand) initiative, in which the city government makes walls available for artists to produce legal graffiti works.

There was much confusion over the location of the original Wienerwand walls and, in 2006, when President George W Bush was in town, Nychos saw a chance to give the street-art movement a push. Knowing police efforts would be concentrated elsewhere, he mobilised a dozen people to paint a huge wall by the canal.

“Within a year the number of visitors increased steadily. Instead of junkies you’d meet mums pushing their baby buggies,” he recalls. “All of a sudden the colourful world we’d created down at the Danube Canal was attracting people. At our own risk — and with our own time and money — we created a new urban biosphere.”

Today the canal remains a big surface provided by the city for people to develop their art. But popularity comes at a price: “The quality sank and the spots are overrun, but that’s how it is,” says Nychos. “The street is the street.”

The saturation of the canal has led to street art manifesting itself in other parts of the city, and not just on the slowly increasing number of legitimate walls gifted by the government. Local venues such as Galerie Ernst Hilger, which presented the successful Cash, Cans & Candy exhibition for several years, featuring works from big names including Shepard Fairey and Faile, have significantly helped raise Vienna’s street-art profile.

Rabbit Eye Movement is a good starting point for the street-art aficionado. Nychos’s own venture in the 6th district — a nod to the rabbits he painted when he first started out — is devoted to street art and urban illustration exhibitions, along with a shop selling T-shirts and prints.

Street art is woven into the everyday in Vienna. A neighbourhood stroll might lead to the dreamy, romantic work of Frau Isa, or Boicut’s abstract, energetic pieces. Vienna Murals’ Street Art Guide Vienna by Thomas Grötschnig is a good jumping-off point, as is signing up for one of the Urban Art Guided Tours organised by Calle Libre.

Founded by Jakob Kattner in 2014, Calle Libre is a week-long festival in August that showcases mainly Latin American street artists. Kattner says Western male artists typically steal the spotlight in the street-art realm — he wanted to shine a light on a different dimension.

“We think the city belongs to everyone and we want to show the possibilities of self-empowerment in using it for your own purposes, aside from advertisements, political campaigns or traffic regulations,” he says. All year he scours the city seeking permission for firewalls — he’s currently up to 40 — on which to paint. Calle Libre has such a strong presence that sometimes people approach Kattner to let his artists have free rein over their walls. Through this open-air gallery he wants to show the people that street art is one of the most influential art forms of the 21st century.

Another must-see spot is #Streetartpassage at the Museums Quartier, the dynamic art hub and home to institutions such as the Leopold Museum and Mumok. Sebastian Schager, an artist and curator who runs the brand @Artis.Love and the Jan Arnold Gallery at MQ, brings in venerable street artists through the Q21 Artists in Residence programme. Wizard Skull and Lady Aiko are two of the artists currently on display, joining Schager’s own work.

“Beautiful paintings make it easy for the public to understand that graffiti is not only vandalism and take this pejorative thinking out of people’s minds,” says Schager.

No one knows how long these ephemeral works will be part of the streetscape before they get painted over — and perhaps there’s an additional element of beauty embedded in that transience.

Details: Vienna

Austrian Airlines (austrian.com) flies to Vienna from London Heathrow from £168 return.

Hotel Altstadt (altstadt.at) offers doubles from £133, B&B.