Who is Banksy? Uncovering the world’s most notorious guerilla graffiti artist

Have you ever pictured yourself as a street artist, patiently waiting until the sun goes down to sneak around the city’s hidden corners and create controversial masterpieces like a spray painting superhero? While this is what many of us associate with the work of graffiti artists and street painters, the drive behind the street art scene delves much deeper.

Street artists are voices of justice in an authoritarian society; using spray paint to spread a message, these undercover artists use their anonymity to say precisely what they think about the world.

However, there is one graffiti artist that rises above the rest. As infamous as he is anonymous, Banksy is the ultimate Batman of the street art scene. While this elusive artist and talented activist is yet to be named, his work has undeniably influenced a whole new generation of guerilla graffiti artists and redefined street art forever.

So, who is Banksy? Stick with us as we unpack the work of the world’s most notorious graffiti artist, learn about the history of this controversial art form, and uncover Banksy’s lasting effect on the street art scene.

Graffiti art has existed since prehistoric times. Evolving from depictions of early hunting scenes on natural surfaces to the bright graphic murals we find in urban hotspots, graffiti art has inspired mainstream illustration since its discovery.  

However, the term ‘Street Art’ first gained popularity in 60s and 70s New York. With the city on the brink of bankruptcy, young creatives took their chance to use the boarded-up buildings and vacant subway stations to spray paint anything from signature tags to politically charged illustrations.

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, 60’s street art pioneers, are both known for kickstarting this controversial urban art genre, breaking the boundaries of art exhibitions. Early street art legends used the city as their canvas to tell suppressed stories and give a voice to those unable to reach the media with their messages.

“I don’t think about art when I’m working. I try to think about life,” said Jean-Michel Basquiat in a 1985 interview about his approach to creating engaging street art.

Today, following the success of Basquiat and Haring, graffiti art is now recognized as an influential art form globally. From inspiring fashion trends to raking in tourism to famous street art hotspots, the popularity of graffiti is rising, and more talented creatives are appearing on the scene than ever before.

One street artist in particular who has dominated the world of guerilla graffiti for the last two decades is Banksy. Whether you’re a street art connoisseur or simply familiar with the term, you will have heard of some of Banksy’s most famous artwork and the infamous anonymous artist himself.

But who is Banksy? Known for his illusive approach to the art world, Banksy has become the figurehead for art activism, and Banksy’s artworks have defined the street art scene we know today. However, as guerilla graffitists like Banksy push art activism into the mainstream, could we face challenging consequences? 

First, the question on everyone’s lips: who is Banksy? The truth is, nobody knows. While his true identity remains unknown, the name Banksy has dominated the world of street art since the early 2000s.

Born in the late 1970s in Bristol, England, Banksy began defining himself as a rising graffiti artist in the early 1990s. While his work was primarily freehand, he took to the streets with his signature style and quickly began to pop up around hidden corners of Bristol and London.

In a 2006 anonymous interview with the Swindle magazine, Banksy, who went by Robin Banx at the time, said: “I came from a relatively small city in southern England. When I was about ten years old, a kid called 3D was painting the streets hard. I think he’d been to New York and was the first to bring spray paint back to Bristol. I grew up seeing spray paint on the streets way before I ever saw it in a magazine or on a computer.

“3D quit painting and formed the band Massive Attack, which may have been good for him but was a big loss for the city. Graffiti was the thing we all loved at school. We did it on the bus on the way home from school. Everyone was doing it.”

Little did he know, he would go on to be one of the most famous faces guerilla graffiti had ever seen. Since then, his passion for spreading powerful messages through street art has taken him from Paris to New York to the depths of the Gaza Strip.

Why is Banksy famous for his street art? Well, this guerilla graffitist knows how to use his artwork to get people’s attention.

Banksy’s graffiti style is striking yet subtle. Interchanging bold graphic installations and smaller, carefully placed motifs, the artist keeps followers on their toes, ensuring that every piece conveys a powerful message.

Banksy’s most popular work is driven by political themes, often criticizing war, hypocrisy, capitalism, and greed. While he is known for using stencils to enhance spray painting speed, every Banksy artwork tells us something different about the state of society.

Inspiring new graffiti font trends and popularising a black-lined approach to street art design, there’s no doubt that his presence within the street art community is responsible for the medium’s rise into the mainstream.

Over the years, Banksy’s signature stencils have become recognizable worldwide. His stencils of rats, apes, and police officers in particular are most commonly associated with his authoritarian approach to the art world.

However, in recent years, Banksy’s approach to guerilla graffiti has taken a new turnhe has added an element of performance to his art style.

Banksy’s ‘Crude Oils’ exhibition of 2005 stepped away from the streets and into a London gallery, where he recreated twenty of the world’s most classic oil paintings, ranging from the works of Vincent van Gogh to Edward Hopper. To finish off his display, he released 200 rats into the gallery, describing his installation as a collection of “re-mixed masterpieces, vandalism, and vermin.”

We have since seen Banksy shred his 2022 Girl With Balloon piece after it fetched over $1 million at auction, paint the bodies of live pigs, and deface private property, simply to send a message.

The art world is evolving. Thanks to the power of social media virality, artists no longer have to go through a rigorous selection process to have their work seen by the eyes of millions of people.

“There’s a whole new audience out there, and it’s never been easier to sell [one’s art],” Banksy told Smithsonian Magazine. “You don’t have to go to college, drag ’round a portfolio, mail off transparencies to snooty galleries, or sleep with someone powerful; all you need now is a few ideas and a broadband connection. This is the first time the essentially bourgeois art world has belonged to the people. We need to make it count.” 

With more rising artists than ever before now taking more risks to send their work ‘viral,’ art has become less about aesthetics and more about how loud the message is.

Banksy uses his platform to question capitalist ideologies. Choosing to express his opinions through street art, the elusive graffitist believes that consumers should experience Banksy’s artwork for free, whether in the city center or through free downloads online. 

“I give away thousands of paintings for free. I don’t think it’s possible to make art about world poverty and trouser all the cash,” Banksy told the New Yorker.

However, the artist has since found it ironic that his name in the art world now fetches millions of dollars at auction.

“I love the way capitalism finds a place—even for its enemies. It’s definitely boom time in the discontent industry. I mean how many cakes does Michael Moore get through?”

Art has always been a medium for sending a message. However, Banksy’s use of art as a tool for activism has certainly turned heads during his enthralling career.

In August 2005-2007, while the question of ‘who is Banksy?’ was fresh on everyone’s mind, the grafittist created one of his most controversial works to date. Visiting the West Bank Wall, called the ‘segregation wall,’ he painted nine large murals, including his now infamous “Rage, the Flower Thrower,” and “Flying Balloon Girl.”

Expressing his feelings about the wall through the medium of graffiti, he released a statement saying that the barrier “essentially turns Palestine into the world’s largest open prison.”

Following that message, he created several Banksy artworks that juxtaposed violence and suffering with hope for a more peaceful tomorrow.

His mural Wall and Piece is a great example of this, depicting two children creating sandcastles in a peaceful beach scene within the illusion of a broken section of the wall using his typical stencil approach to create a bold ‘false opening.’ 

His work here conveyed a false promise of ‘the grass is greener,’ sending a powerful yet controversial message to Israeli security forces.

When questioned about his ‘vandalism’ by Israeli officers, the artist simply replied, “How illegal is it to vandalize a wall if the wall itself has been deemed unlawful by the International Court of Justice?”

As creative expression becomes a powerful tool for activism, is Banksy’s approach to street art inspiring rising stars or single-handedly promoting a graffiti scene associated with vandalism, violence, and protest?

1970s New York also faced the same challenges surrounding the debate between art and vandalism. As the subway system became the home to a pervasive graffiti problem, the congregation of large gangs in public spaces fueled fear for safety and posed a financial burden on city clean-ups. 

While the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) proposed new initiatives such as the “Clean Trains Program” and several anti-graffiti technologies, the challenges remain today.

In a 2003 interview with the BBC, Banksy was asked whether his graffiti work should be considered an act of vandalism. To this, the artist replied: “If it’s done properly, it is illegal! But I got a good reaction I think off most people from my work. You know, I’ve even had policemen in the past say they kind of like things about it, but… I just think it’s my right to go out and paint it.”

While Banksy has been historically commended for his battle against authoritarian culture, he’s used his platform to cause new levels of chaos in recent years. With his identity well hidden, the artist is known for getting away with all the tricks he uses to spread an anti-capitalist message.

For example, in 2022, Banksy’s reaction to high-street retailer Guess using one of his iconic designs within their clothing range sparked controversy amongst fans. Taking to Instagram, the artist told followers to start shoplifting from the brand’s Regent Street store:

“Attention all shoplifters. Please go to Guess on Regents Street. They’ve helped themselves to my artwork without asking; how can it be wrong for you to do the same to their clothes?”

While many decided not to act on his request, it generated a buzz within the art community—just one example of how powerful Banksy’s platform has become. The question is, how far could he go simply to send a message?

Banksy’s most famous stunt to date also raised concerns about his approach to politically charged art. One of his most iconic paintings, Girl With Balloon, was auctioned at Sotheby’s for a staggering $1.04 million in 2022, although not without a twist.

No sooner than a sale price was agreed upon, the painting started shredding itself within its frame. The prank took place in front of a live audience, with the video of the moment quickly going viral online and causing a stir.

While the newer version of the piece, Love Is In the Bin, is now worth more than $18.5 million, Banksy’s controversial medium of sending a message was questioned once again.

Since then, the artist has released a video of the shredder installation process, claiming that he wanted to criticize the commercialization of the modern art industry.

Banksy’s approach to the art scene may go against the industry’s traditional boundaries. However, the graffitist believes that the controversy Banksy’s street art generates gets people talking about what those in charge do not want us to see.

Banksy also believes that graffiti is one of the only mediums left to spread a message or tell a story, rendering it the most powerful art form.

“Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don’t come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they’re having a piss.” Banksy, claims in his book, Banging Your Head Against A Brick Wall.

Street art is undoubtedly a clever tool to use to tell suppressed stories, and this alone has inspired many guerilla artists to pursue the work they do. 

For Oakland-born guerilla graffitist DeVante Brooks, street art is a medium he uses to regain his lost voice as a black man. Known for painting large murals during the BLM movement on one of Oakland’s busiest avenues, Broadway Street, his goal is to get people talking about uncomfortable topics and reach out to those who feel silenced, just like Banksy.

His 2021 mural, The Future Is Ours, aimed to offer hope to young black people during the midst of the BLM movement.

“I want to target young Black men who grew up like I did,” he told Harvard Political Review. “I had no real strong kind of father figure to guide me. If you feel like you can help someone get through their day with your artwork, put it out there. Someone might want to see it, or they might need it, and that will push them to do something great.”

The street art world is constantly evolving. As we welcome technology into the art world, it has never been easier to immortalize murals and share physical work across the globe.

Banksy is just one graffitist pioneering the future of contemporary street art, regularly using his digital platform to share his work and opinions with his global fanbase. In fact, Banksy even offers free downloadable versions of some of his greatest paintings on his website, claiming that his art should be accessible to all.

Better still, Banksy’s artworks have now evolved into interactive murals leveraging the power of QR codes. 

Many of Banksy’s more modern approaches to street art are now digitally enhanced. However, the first piece to blur the lines between physical and digital art was his Les Misérables painting in 2016.

Recreating the poster from the famous French musical Les Misérables, the piece depicts a young girl surrounded by dangerous teargas. While his graffiti stencil was powerful enough to send a message to its onlookers, the artist used this opportunity to paint a stenciled QR code next to the mural for viewers to engage with.

This QR code then led viewers to a seven-minute long video that shows footage of the police raids on the Calais Jungle refugee camp in early 2016, which saw many of the refugees attacked by French police who used a mixture of rubber bullets and teargas.

Using a digital medium to enhance the backstory of his piece, Banksy aimed to invoke feelings of shock and horror from members of the public, forever immortalizing the footage on the streets of Calais.

The way we interact with graffiti is constantly changing. What was once a symbol of urban decline is now responsible for some of the planet’s most significant pieces of art.

While guerilla graffitists like Banksy and Keith Haring first brought the concept intoBanksy’sainstream, the future looks bright for rising street art stars.

Street art is now inspiring several other industries, too. From featuring in high fashion collections to infiltrating mainstream graphic design trends, the stigma associated with graffiti is slowly dissolving.

‘Street art style’ has taken off among GenZ and Millennial consumers, encouraging brands such as Supreme, Stussy, and BAPE to introduce graffiti-style graphics into their collection designs.

If we look at the street art scene in ten years, will Banksy still be relevant? Will people still ask, ‘Who is Banksy?’. We think so. However, his approach to guerilla art will continue to transform with the changing attitudes of his audience.

There will always be something new to comment on, so we expect that Banksy will find more innovative ways to fight back against capitalist ideologies and influential authoritarian figures.

As for graffiti itself, there’s no doubt that this art medium will remain integral in telling suppressed stories and will continue giving a voice to tomorrow’s art activists.

And that’s a wrap! While you’re here, check out the top Graphic Design Trends for 2024 as well as our deep dive into 90s grunge design.