ATHENS — The young man climbed a 30-foot scaffold on a building in central Athens and dipped a brush into a tray of gray paint. With rapid flicks of his wrist, he outlined a haunting image: a baby with two faces, looking simultaneously into an abyss and toward the sky, its vacant eyes searching for a future that was not there.

The mural, by a Greek street artist known as iNO, was delicate, stylized and clever, stopping passers-by in their tracks. Fundamentally, though, it was a raw message of protest, the latest in a wave of socially and politically conscious artwork spreading over the walls of Athens.

“People in Greece are under increasing pressure,” said iNO, a soft-spoken man who aims to draw attention to the social situation in this crisis-hit country, where even the youngest in society are grappling with the perception of a bleak future. As a result, he said, “they feel the need to act, resist and express themselves.”

Graffiti in Athens, as in other cities the world over, has flourished for decades. But in a country where the adversity of wars and military dictatorship already has shaped the national psyche, the five-year economic collapse has spawned a new burst of creative energy that has turned Athens into a contemporary mecca for street art in Europe.