Banksy is an anonymous England-based street artist, political activist, and film director, active since the 1990s. Banksy is commonly believed to be Robin Gunningham, born on 28 July 1973. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique.
Banksy has published several books that contain photographs of his work accompanied by his own writings: Cut It Out (2004), Pictures of Walls (2005), Wall and Piece (2007). His works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges throughout the world. Banksy's work grew out of the Bristol underground scene, which involved collaborations between artists and musicians.
Banksy displays his art on publicly visible surfaces such as walls and self-built physical prop pieces. Banksy started as a freehand graffiti artist in 1990–1994 as one of Bristol's DryBreadZ Crew (DBZ), with two other artists known as Kato and Tes. He was inspired by local artists and his work was part of the larger Bristol underground scene with Nick Walker, Inkie and 3D.
By 2000 he had turned to the art of stencilling after realising how much less time it took to complete a work. By employing this technique, he soon became more widely noticed for his art around Bristol and London. Banksy's first known large wall mural was The Mild Mild West painted in 1997 to cover advertising of a former solicitors' office on Stokes Croft in Bristol.
Banksy's stencils feature striking and humorous images occasionally combined with slogans. The message is usually anti-war, anti-capitalist, or anti-establishment. On 27 April 2007, a new record high for the sale of Banksy's work was set with the auction of the work Space Girl and Bird fetching £288,000 (US$576,000) around 20 times the estimate at Bonhams of London.
In October 2007, most of his works offered for sale at Bonhams auction house in London sold for more than twice their reserve price. Banksy's documentary film Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) made its debut at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. In January 2011, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for the film. In 2014, he was awarded Person of the Year at the 2014 Webby Awards.
On 13 February 2020, the Valentine’s Banksy mural appeared on the side of a building in Bristol's Barton Hill neighbourhood, depicting a young girl firing a slingshot of real red flowers and leaves. He dedicated a painting to healthcare workers and donated it to the University Hospital of Southampton during the global coronavirus pandemic in May 2020.