Dan Groover's street murals aren't only a fun pop of color, but windows for layers of meaning

Photos: Elchanan Kotler

When Dan Groover began painting graffiti on public walls around Paris, it was more about having fun and seeing what he could get away with in the middle of the night than deep expressions of an artist’s soul. But once he connected with his heritage in Jerusalem, he realized that street murals are not only a fun pop of color, but can be a window for so many layers of meaning in these spiritually intense times

Jerusalem is a city of ancient alleyways and high-rise buildings, of old-time grocery stores and modern malls, and — tucked behind makeshift stalls or proudly displayed on concrete walls — a surprising array of street paintings and intentional graffiti. Yet while some of this wall art has become iconic for regular passersby, few know that a large portion of the most well-known street paintings were created by an anonymous artist who goes under the name Dan Groover.

For years, Groover avoided fame and publicity. He lived in Jerusalem’s Mekor Baruch neighborhood on the other side of Geula, prayed every morning at a local minyan, and learned in a small kollel. Yet toward evening, he’d climb scaffolding with his brushes, cans, and paint sprayers, creating images bursting with color and messages of comfort and hope. Groover was the shadow painter who rarely spoke of his craft, and friends from the minyan or kollel who saw him at work couldn’t believe their eyes. “What are you doing on that scaffold? And what is that painting?” they’d ask in astonishment.

“Well, it’s not exactly that I hid my art, but throughout my life, even before I became Torah-observant, I saw the world as divided into the revealed and the hidden,” he says. “So yes, for a long time, I gravitated to the hidden side. I built the structures beneath the surface, didn’t talk much about what I was doing, and left others to understand my art.”