Abstract The gesture of impact on a surface, to speak about a place, expresses our need to grasp the space outside us. The act of embellishing, is part of the sense of order, as Gombrich mentioned, being a peculiar trait in human nature as it is a gesture towards the repetitive and abstract. Inhabiting from the surface: space and decorative gesture. An approach to the artistic interventions on wall from minimalism to today, is not an intended to compose a definitive list of names and movements around the modern and contemporary mural painting. We want to articulate around the question of living space from the surface, different processes and ideas that have made possible, from the art, broader concepts about the gesture decorative art and everyday space. Contextualize the problem at first through the discussion of the decorative arts (1900), the emergence of design as a gap between “art for art's sake” and functional art (around 1919) and the fundamental role of architecture (International Style) in understanding the formal and spatial language of the materials and their interaction volume, as a prelude to an American post vanguard movement named minimal art. Observe how minimalist objects were built, linking the work, the space occupied and the phenomena that unleashed his real presence on the space and the dialogue with viewer, thereby opening a work of art to the public sphere. The dialogue established between the outer and inner space of the decades of the 60s and 70s, led to a comprehensive vision of art and demonstrations of daily life. Through processual and ephemeral configurations stimulated a more extensive concept of space and place within the city and its furnishings. Based in these aspects of diversity and transformation, we see how the twenty-first century art connects different layers of culture, and dissolve the boundaries between high and low art. Through the work of several artists who since the mid-90s until now move into the language of the installation and intervention in the architectural space, we found in all of these speeches an opening to a functional and inhabitable art as a result of the interaction of elements from different practices and their proposal of an expansion toward the peripheral, ephemeral and decorative art, in a more conciliatory way than divisive or irreconcilable perspective in the discussion of the decorative. Resúmenes 438