Counterculture · 2010–present · Latin America & Caribbean
Lambe-Lambe Posters (Brazilian Paste-Up Street Posters)
Also known as Lambe-lambe, Lambes, Brazilian wheatpaste posters
Paper posters and stickers in sheets of varying sizes, pasted with hand-made glue onto walls, poles and bins in densely urbanised Brazilian cities. Derived from the language of graffiti, lambes combine illustration, collage and photography, and repeat mass-reproduced images in series. Unlike a commercial cartaz they carry a critical, questioning message about social issues.
Make something in this style Get advice in this style Mix it with another style
Use it with care
Lambe-lambe here means the critical street-poster practice, not the commercial cartaz (advertising) or circus posters, which are a separate lineage. Wikipedia also links Latin American posters of the 1960s to late 1980s to protest against military regimes, including in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo; this entry covers the contemporary urban scene documented by 2015-2016 studies, and its start date of 2010 is an approximation, not a sourced origin. Lambes are political and critical speech, often about social inequality; do not borrow the look as a decorative or commercial 'edgy' skin. Visual traits beyond illustration, collage, photography, serial repetition and wall pasting (lettering, photocopy, stencil, ink count) are not established by the sources read, so they are held at low weight; the palette is a neutral paper-and-ink approximation, not sampled from posters. The Fortaleza 2016 and ANPAP 2017 papers could not be verified and are not relied on. Pixação is a separate Brazilian practice with its own entry. The Luis Alvaz sticker is the only named maker found; the exemplars are otherwise scholarship, not posters.
01
How it works
- Paste paper sheets of varying sizes directly onto walls, poles and street furniture rather than into frames or private rooms.
- Repeat the same reproduced image in series so one motif becomes a pattern across the wall.
- Combine illustration, collage and photographic fragments in a single sheet.
- Aim the image at a critical, questioning message about social issues, not at selling a product or decorating a room.
- Make the adhesive by hand; choose starch-only paste when removal matters, since flour paste cross-links through its gluten and becomes very hard to remove.
Brazilian cities, with documented studies in Belo Horizonte and São Paulo (Baixo Augusta)
02
Its design choices
From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.
- Layout & composition
- Space & hierarchy
- Typography
- Form & shape
- Surface & texture
- Ornament
- Imagery
- Medium & production
- Tone & intent
- Avoids
- Gloss & highlights, Abundant decoration, Luxurious & glamorous
Palette
-
#f2efe6 -
#141414 -
#8c8a82 -
#e8e1d0
Typefaces
-
Hand-drawn lettering, where present
not documented in the sources read; low weight
-
Whatever display lettering the artist supplies; no typeface is established for the form
Known for
-
Scholarship, not posters
Luis Navarro, Pele de Propaganda: Lambes e stickers em Belo Horizonte (2016), a study of lambes and stickers in Belo Horizonte
-
Scholarship, not posters
Diogo Oliveira, Lambe-Lambe Resistência à verticalização do Baixo Augusta (USP-ECA, 2015), a study of lambes in Baixo Augusta, São Paulo
-
Luis Alvaz, a Simpsons-inspired urban sticker credited on the Wikipedia Lambe-lambe article
a sticker, the only named maker there
03
Make something in this style
Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Lambe-Lambe Posters (Brazilian Paste-Up Street Posters)’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.
04
Where it comes from, and what it’s close to
Before it
The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.
After it
The styles that grew out of it.
No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.
Alike in its design choices
Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.
-
- Dazibao (Big-Character Posters) 55% alike
- Oaxacan Protest Printmaking & Street Graphics (ASARO) 55% alike
-
-
-
05
Often taken for
Lambe-Lambe Posters has no real works recorded yet, so these are its nearest styles by its choices alone, with the choices that tell them apart.
-
Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20)
Chilean Estallido Social Graphics is one of Lambe-Lambe Posters’s nearest styles by choices; no real work of either fits the other better.
Choices that tell Lambe-Lambe Posters and Chilean Estallido Social Graphics apart Choice Lambe-Lambe Posters Chilean Estallido Social Graphics Paper & letterpress bite characteristic — Horror vacui — defining Photocopy & distress — defining Stylised figuration occasional defining Hand-lettering occasional defining No shared descent in the atlas: they reached these choices separately.
-
Dazibao (Big-Character Posters)
Dazibao is one of Lambe-Lambe Posters’s nearest styles by choices; no real work of either fits the other better.
Choices that tell Lambe-Lambe Posters and Dazibao apart Choice Lambe-Lambe Posters Dazibao Line illustration defining — Typography only — defining Repetition & rhythm defining occasional Painterly brushwork — defining Photomontage characteristic — No shared descent in the atlas: they reached these choices separately.
-
Oaxacan Protest Printmaking & Street Graphics (ASARO)
Oaxacan Protest Printmaking & Street Graphics is one of Lambe-Lambe Posters’s nearest styles by choices; no real work of either fits the other better.
Choices that tell Lambe-Lambe Posters and Oaxacan Protest Printmaking apart Choice Lambe-Lambe Posters Oaxacan Protest Printmaking Collage & layering defining occasional Folk & sacred symbols — defining Repetition & rhythm defining occasional Carved line — defining Photomontage characteristic — No shared descent in the atlas: they reached these choices separately.
-
Gráfica del 68 (Mexican Student Movement Graphics)
Gráfica del 68 is one of Lambe-Lambe Posters’s nearest styles by choices; no real work of either fits the other better.
Choices that tell Lambe-Lambe Posters and Gráfica del 68 apart Choice Lambe-Lambe Posters Gráfica del 68 Collage & layering defining occasional Single focal point — defining Repetition & rhythm defining occasional Carved line — defining Treated photography characteristic — No shared descent in the atlas: they reached these choices separately.
— means the choice isn’t among the style’s recorded choices. Critics recorded each work’s choices with the styles’ descriptions in view, so this shows whether the descriptions hold together, not proof that they are right.
06
Combine it with
Styles Lambe-Lambe Posters (Brazilian Paste-Up Street Posters) pairs well with or plays against, from the research. Each is worked out as a combination: which style gives the type, the colours and the forms.
- Stencil Street Art Pairs well · Both descend from or sit beside graffiti culture in the street; pair a pasted series with a painted element only where a project needs both.
- Pixação (São Paulo Tag Reto) Contrasts · Both are Brazilian urban wall practices, but lambes are pasted paper with illustration, collage and photography in series, while pixação is painted lettering; compare the medium, not the politics.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Order from a rigorous grid and neutral type set against order built by repeating pasted sheets by hand.
- Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics (Ni Una Menos and the Green Wave) Contrasts · A later Argentine protest-graphics movement; compare how a campaign gets a unified look by shared symbol versus by serial pasting of varied images.
07
Sources
- https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambe-lambe (graffiti derivation; illustration, collage, photography; serial presentation; starch vs flour paste; cartaz/pôster/lambe distinction; dictatorship-era posters)
- Luis Navarro, Pele de Propaganda: Lambes e stickers em Belo Horizonte (2016), as cited by the Wikipedia article
- Diogo Oliveira, Lambe-Lambe Resistência à verticalização do Baixo Augusta (USP-ECA, 2015), as cited by the Wikipedia article
How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.