Banksy has been given the unspoken title of “King of Street Art,” the most famous “art terrorist” and “Most Wanted Man in the Art World.” Despite the huge popularity of his works around the world, Banksy tries to stay in the shadows and prefers not to advertise the details of his biography. However, some information, or perhaps legends, still leaked to the press.
Banksy's real name is Robin or Robert Banks. He was born in 1974 in the UK, in Bristol. Banksy became interested in graffiti as a fourteen-year-old
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Banksy has been given the unspoken title of “King of Street Art,” the most famous “art terrorist” and “Most Wanted Man in the Art World.” Despite the huge popularity of his works around the world, Banksy tries to stay in the shadows and prefers not to advertise the details of his biography. However, some information, or perhaps legends, still leaked to the press.
Banksy's real name is Robin or Robert Banks. He was born in 1974 in the UK, in Bristol. Banksy became interested in graffiti as a fourteen-year-old teenager. He began painting in the early 1990s as part of the DryBreadZ Crew. But he quickly surpassed his colleagues. At the time, he was detained more than ten times by police, more times he managed to escape. Once, hiding from law enforcement officers under the train car, Banksy came up with the idea of using a stencil to avoid wasting too much time on drawing small details.
The main themes of Banksy’s works are culture, politics, interpersonal relations and ethical ideals of humanism. Banksy’s paintings are anti-globalization and left-wing radical slogans, a protest against the capitalist consumer society, the domination of advertising, violence against animals and interhuman wars.
In addition to the streets from which Banksy began his social art action, his paintings now fill the halls of the most famous galleries of the world: the New York Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, Metropolitan Museum of Art, British Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and American Museum of Natural History. At the same time, Banksy often, without waiting for the invitation of museums, secretly hangs his paintings next to world masterpieces, changing into an old janitor or an employee of the hall.
Many of his works sell for fabulous money (£20,000-£30,000), but the artist himself has a dubious attitude, continuing to fight against brands and capital, rejecting offers from Nike and Puma.
In 2010, at the Berlin Film Festival, he presented his film Exit Through the Gift Shop, passing unrecognized on the red carpet of the festival. /