Banksy
English graffiti artist, political activist, and painter · United Kingdom · On the map · Artists · Born 1973 · age 53
The world's most famous artist has no confirmed face. Banksy's stencilled street pieces - sly, brutal, often gone by morning - turn up on walls from London to Bethlehem, and the question of who made them matters less than the fact that millions stop to look.
Banksy is read about 3,943 times a day, in 64 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 4 November 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 400 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?A life in dates
People around Banksy
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Also in Deutsch
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Photos 5
On YouTube
95.7K subscribersIn their own words 4
I need someone to protect me from all the measures they take in order to protect me.
I used to tell everyone I meant to be an artist..... I don't do that any more.
We don’t need any more heroes; we just need someone to take out the recycling.
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About this person
He emerged from Bristol's underground scene in the 1990s, where artists and musicians blurred the line between collaboration and vandalism. His stencil technique let him work fast, and his dark humour made the work stick. The art appeared on public surfaces - walls, bridges, surfaces no one asked permission to use - and though he stopped selling reproductions, the installations themselves became so valuable that buyers began removing entire walls. In 2010 he directed Exit Through the Gift Shop, a documentary that premiered at Sundance and earned an Academy Award nomination the following January. He created an agency called Pest Control to handle the rare official sales. The identity remains unconfirmed, and the work keeps appearing.

