About

Banksy is a legendary street artist who is alive today. His profile is a masked artist whose many aspects are shrouded in secrecy and unknown, including his date of birth and real name (unauthorized graffiti is illegal, so he may be secretive for the sake of his art activities). He is sometimes called an "art terrorist" because of his guerrilla approach, such as leaving graffiti works with political messages on walls around town and exhibiting his own works in famous museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum, without a permit. Thoroughly opposed to commercialism, he has turned down offers for collaborations and album covers from the world’s top companies such as Sony, Nike, and Microsoft, as well as top musicians such as Orbital and Massive Attack, but ironically, his work is the most expensive street art in existence. (in 2013, a piece he left on a wall called "Slave Labor" sold for $1,100,000). He said of the high prices his work is fetching, "When my canvases started fetching high prices, I was very perplexed. I saw myself sentenced to a future of painting only masterpieces." He responded on his website, quoting Matisse.

Biography