The oldest graffiti brand in the world arrives in Porto with the potential of a blank canvas

Montana Shop Porto is not lacking in cans. There are dozens of colours filling the walls of the graffiti paint shop that two young people – one from Porto and another from Germany - opened in the city with the aim of making room for the various forms of street art to take place. From Barcelona to Porto, Montana Colours brings colour, art, special care for the environment and a strong desire to draw on the preconceptions associated with those who find on walls a form of expression.

When she was a teenager, Marta Ferreira used the walls of abandoned factories to try out the art of graffiti. A couple of years after, she was responsible for bringing to Porto the oldest specialized paint brand, the Catalan Montana Colors, that, since 1994, has been painting all over the world: from Tokyo to São Paulo, from Bangkok to Santiago, Chile. After the Invicta, there are already plans to go to New York.

The author of the idea is Jordi Rubio, who opened the company to allow “friends who used to paint graffiti to have better quality paint than those used in cars or fences”, says the responsible for the Porto store. He wanted to do it in the company where he worked at the time, but then the hurdles and disbelief in the art began. The Catalan took the risk, and so Montana Colors was born, with “a range with more diversified colours, suitable for graffiti, and also more affordable”.

As the company’s salesperson in Portugal, Marta Ferreira was the obvious choice to bring her own Montana shop to this side of the peninsula (after a franchise in Lisbon closed). Jordi Rubio’s desire was “to turn Porto into a small Barcelona” in the graffiti world and street art in general.

Because there are differences, explains Marta. “The graffiti itself is the letters, those well-made ones, with colour and that is art”, although people confuse it “with those sentences doodled on the walls”. However, murals “are more cartoon-like, more styled, something permanent”, while graffiti is something passing, to be painted over. Both are art, she says, “and both must be respected”. In fact, she believes that “If it wasn’t for graffiti, street art wouldn’t exist today”.

At Montana Shop Porto there is space for everyone. Even for “the ladies who want to paint something at home, illustrators who come looking for marker pens” or “car people who buy sprays to paint parts”. For those with no experience in graffiti, whether children “who are fascinated with this art”, or adults looking for something more technical, artists MYNAMEISNOTSEM and Mariana PTKS give workshops in the store. But Marta wants Montana “open to people with ideas” and, therefore, there are other trainings underway.

Promote Invicta street artists

Every month there is a new exhibition – BellePhame has already passed through those walls and now there are Halloween characters from Ekyone born in Porto. But because “we want to be more than a paint shop”, Montana has a small bar with vegan food, by Matthias Tholen. Everything in detail: the cocktails have the exact colours of the paints sold, and Porto is also present in the coffee that comes from Combi Coffee Roasters, in Nortada Beer, in bread from Odete Bakery and in the fresh products that they pick up from the grocery store right around the corner.

Two philosophies unite the painting: to be as environmentally friendly as possible – all sprays and materials are 100% vegan-, and to promote the city’s artists – be it graffiti, murals, illustration, or those looking for a space to practise, those trying it for the first time, or more popular names such as Hazul, author of the work “Arca da Água”, Mariana Malhão, who paid tribute to São João das Fontaínhas, or MrDheo and his famous Mural da Trindade.

Montana came to paint Porto with the colours of street art, without preconceptions, without illegalities, making the city a blank canvas for creativity.