Banksy

One of the earliest and longest surviving of Banksy’s works, the mural Take The Money And Run, was painted during the early 1990s in collaboration with Bristol graffiti writers Inky and Mobz. It depicts the silhouettes of three thieves and features the New York-inspired graffiti lettering that was extremely popular amongst street artists during that period.

Another notable example of Banksy’s early œuvre is the mural The Mild Mild West. Painted in 1998, it depicts a teddy bear throwing a Molotov cocktail at three policemen clad in riot gear. In 2002, Banksy stencilled the equally well-known image Gorilla In A Pink Mask onto the wall of a social club in Bristol’s Eastville. The work remained in situ for almost ten years before being inadvertently removed in July 2011.

Banksy’s early freehand pieces, such as Take The Money And Run, were influenced by the graffiti that had appeared in New York during the 1980s, a style made internationally famous by the hip hop film, Wild Style. Many of his early contemporaries, namely graffiti writers 3D, Inkie and Nick Walker, had attempted to recreate these kind of works in their native Bristol. Banksy’s later stencil works bear striking similarity to the street paintings of Parisian artist Xavier Prou, who operates under the pseudonym Blek Le Rat. One of the first street artists in the French capital and a former architecture student, Prou has been creating stencil-based artworks since the early 1980s and is often dubbed the ‘Father of stencil graffiti’.

A producer of deeply satirical art, Banksy has taken great inspiration from canonical artists and their work, including Keith Haring – whose trademark dog he recreates in the piece Choose Your Weapon – and Andy Warhol.

Little is known about the identity of Banksy, with some even claiming that the artist is not one person but rather a collective of individuals. In 2010, Banksy directed the film Exit Through The Gift Shop, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Following the story of Thierry Guetta, a Frenchman living in Los Angeles who sets out to make a documentary about Banksy, many have speculated that the film itself was a publicity stunt, designed to make viewers question the commodification of art in recent years.

Around 70 Banksy print releases have taken place over the last two decades, comprising an estimated 30,000 individual prints. It is assumed that around 10,000 of these are signed by the artist and unsurprisingly, Banksy’s signed works sell for significantly higher than those that are not. It is almost laughable today that back in 2004, upon the original release of his Girl with a Balloon print, 150 signed copies of Banksy’s preeminent motif sold for only £150, with the 600 unsigned going for only £75. In contrast, an edition from this very same series sold for £475,500 at Christie's in March 2021, demonstrating the consistent interest and increase in value ascribed to the artist’s work and his ability to remain relevant.

While Banksy has not released any new prints since Sale Ends V2 in 2017, there is a huge secondary market for both his signed and unsigned works. Another of his popular motifs, the Rat, seen in prints such as Gangsta Rat, (2004) originally released in 2004 as a 750 print series, has only grown in popularity; increasing in value by over 280% between 2008 - 2022, where one version last sold for £31,500 at Bonham's in March 2022.