Cocoa workers come to life in huge mural

Brazilian mural artist Eduardo Kobra poses in front of his 5,700-square-meter work in Sao Paulo. [Photo/Agencies]

ITAPEVI, Brazil - Many painters struggle to get their work viewed but Brazilian street artist Eduardo Kobra won't have a problem - his most recent work is billed as the biggest in the world.

The prolific Kobra takes as his canvas the sides of the Cacau Show factory on one of the main highways into Sao Paulo - and not just one side. The piece wraps around the corners.

Still not quite finished, it shows the top half of an indigenous tribesman in a multicolored collage as he paddles through a great brown river of chocolate. The work connects the chocolate products inside the building to the traditions of far-off Amazonian cocoa farmers.

Kobra already holds the Guinness World Record for biggest spray paint mural in Rio de Janeiro and he says this one, at 5,700 square meters, is even bigger.

"People can pass by on the highway, even if they're going 100 km per hour and they can still see what the message is on the wall," he says.

"The image shows one of the cocoa workers transporting cocoa in his boat. I've also turned the river into a river formed entirely of chocolate," he says.

"It's the biggest mural I've ever made," he says. "The mural above all is trying to show something of the workers and pay homage to them."

Kobra says he started off with as many as 10 different designs for the mural, all of them based on scenes from the Amazon's cocoa-rich regions.

Once he settled on a design, he needed cranes to lift 12 platforms for his painting team, who joined him from 8 am to 6 pm over two months, with about two weeks left to go.

Alexandre Costa, president of Cacau Show chocolate makers, says the work should remind people of what goes into every bar they unwrap.

"I am really happy with the result of this work. People who eat chocolate don't know what's behind this - the land where it's harvested and so on."

Agence France-Presse