Banksy Prints, Editions & Original Artwork

The art world’s agent provocateur in chief, Banksy, has gone from Bristol-based graffiti writer to international Street Art sensation. The artist’s personal biography is relatively unknown and the question still remains, who is Banksy? Despite Banksy's anonymity, his subversive works have acted as a mouthpiece for the artist's stance on social issues, boosting him to the top of the Urban Art scene.

Inspired by the French graffiti artist, Blek le Rat (real name Xavier Prou), Banksy’s art is both simple and evocative, poking fun through their satirical content. Banksy is well-known for using public buildings to stage his works, but it is his infamous stunts have further cemented him as a household name.

Banksy’s stunts go hand in hand with the most notable works of his career. Such is the case with his groundbreaking Girl with Balloon, which began as a series of murals in 2002 depicting a young girl with her hand reaching for a red, heart-shaped balloon. During a 2018 Sotheby’s auction, Banksy’s Girl with Balloon was shredded before a crowd of stunned onlookers. Now titled Love Is In The Bin, Banksy’s audacious act boosted the artwork’s selling price by 20%, making it the highest-selling Banksy work ever sold at £18.9 million.

Another of Banksy’s most famous artworks is his 2020 Game Changer, which was painted in tribute to the efforts of the NHS against the COVID pandemic. Selling for £16.7 million at auction, the proceeds were donated to the NHS and the painting was hung at the Southampton General Hospital.

Banksy’s 2009 Devolved Parliament is also worthy of note. It is an iconic painting that depicts chimpanzees debating in the House of Commons. A witty, political commentary on the state of British politics, the painting was displayed in Bristol Museum on Brexit Day and served as a fitting reflection of events, even a decade after its execution.

What is the key to making returns on a Banksy? Destroying it apparently. Love Is In The Bin had an incredible increase in value when it returned to auction, in it’s half-shredded condition, at Sotheby’s London on 14 October 2021.

Back in 2018, Banksy pulled one of the most famous stunts in art history, when he tried to destroy his painting Girl with Balloon, now Love Is In The Bin, at a Sotheby’s auction. As the hammer went down Girl with Balloon slid through a hidden shredder in the frame and produced an altogether new work. Love Is In The Bin is the only work of art to be created live at auction and is Banksy’s all time highest record sale, achieving almost £18.6 million.

Banksy’s Game Changer raised £16.8 million for the NHS when it was sold at Christie’s 20th Century Art Evening Sale in London on 23 March 2021 – exactly one year after the UK’s first national lockdown. The price started at £1.6 million and skyrocketed as the 15-minute bidding battle unfolded, with the work eventually selling for almost seven times its £2.5 million low estimate.

Banksy donated the painting to Southampton General Hospital in May 2020, in recognition for the front-line workers’ tireless work during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. A reproduction of Game Changer now hangs in the same place at the hospital.

On 9 November, 2021, the iconic painting Sunflowers from Petrol Station sold for US$14.5million (£10.7million) at Christie’s 21st Century Evening Sale in New York.

The work came directly from the private collection of the high profile British fashion designer Sir Paul Smith, and transports Vincent Van Gogh’s world famous series of Sunflower paintings into the contemporary context of the climate crisis. Not only does this work exemplify Banksy’s skill as a painter, but it is also exemplary of the artist’s unmatched ability to use wit and humour to point to pressing global issues.