BANKSY

Banksy is a well-known unidentified English graffiti artist who spreads topics such as politics, culture, and moral messages by drawing his pieces around on street walls in England.

He is believed to be a native of Gloucestershire, northeast of the city of Bristol and to have been born in 1974, the son of a photocopier engineer, but there is substantial public uncertainty about his identity and personal and biographical details. He trained as a butcher but became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980’s.

He uses, for his street art, a combination of graffiti writing with a distinctive stenciling technique. Banksy started as an unguided graffiti artist in 1992-1994 as one of Bristol's DryBreadZ Crew (DBZ). He was inspired by local artists and his work was part of the larger “Bristol underground scene”.

By 2000 he had turned to the art of stenciling after realizing how much less time it took to complete a "piece." He claims he changed to stenciling whilst he was hiding from the police under a train carriage, when he noticed the stenciled serial number and employing this technique soon became more widely noticed for his art around Bristol and London. His art has appeared in cities around the world.

Filippo