Banksy: The Monochrome Beginning
Over the last 30 years, the artwork of mysterious British street artist Banksy has captured the attention of a worldwide audience.
Banksy started getting attention in Bristol in the 1990s, but it was after his move to London in the early 2000s that his work really gained momentum, exploding into a global art phenomenon.
For many artists in the age of social media, recognition and personal branding have become an essential part of their success. For Banksy, however, his anonymity has only helped build his mystique and made Banksy a near-mythical figure in the art world.
Known for mixing satire with street art to make strong, often controversial statements on politics, society and culture, Banksy’s anarchic work usually appears as stencilled graffiti in urban areas. His pieces that often address heavy topics like war, capitalism, surveillance, and social injustice—all with a distinctive dark sense of humour.
Voted Britain’s favourite artist in 2019, beating the likes of familiar favourites JMW Turner and L.S Lowry, Banksy’s work has popped up in cities around the world, but his most iconic stencils appear across London. Iconic images such as Girl With Balloon, a powerfully simplistic motif of a young girl grasping for a heart shaped red balloon which is just out of reach, has been recreated in multiple forms over the years. In fact in 2018, a version of Girl with a Balloon famously self-destructed after being sold at auction—seemingly shredded by the very frame holding it in place.
Between 2002 and 2017, the only publisher of Banksy’s print work was Pictures On Walls, a loose collective of artists, illustrators and graffiti writers. POW set about democratising art made by artists who were, at that time, flying under the radar of what they called “the centuries-old grip of the established art world”, disseminating work across the UK and then internationally. Artists such as Dface, Faile, 3d, Jamie Hewlett (of Gorillaz and Tank Girl fame), and, of course Banksy became defining figures of street art and illustration in the early 2000s.
We explore the first three influential prints produced by Banksy and Pictures On Walls.
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