The most wide-ranging and up-to-date volume available on the enigmatic and controversial graffiti artist, this deeply researched and highly personal tribute explores how Banksy continues to defy accepted wisdom about artistic success, growing only more famous and powerful even as he sticks to his anti-establishment platform and to his mission to give a voice to the voiceless.



Accompanied by stunning full-page, full-color reproductions and photographs of works in situincluding many that have been lost to timephotographer and street art expert Alessandra Mattanzas impassioned and informed text follows Banksys career trajectory from creator of message-laden stencils on Londons city walls to a sought-after champion of human and environmental rights. She investigates many of the key images that populate Banksys workanimals, children, historic figures, balloons, cartoon characters, police officers, and others. She shows how Banksys oeuvre has expanded beyond graffiti and stenciling and how his art has helped support his activism in a variety of causesfrom calls for peace in the Middle East to the preservation of the natural environment. Best of all she helps readers make sense of the rather unusual path Banksy has chosenan artist who uses his global platform to raise awareness about the underserved, rather than to his own celebrity. Readers will come away with a new understanding of how Banksy helped transform an illegal act of criminal damage into a high art form, and how, by ridiculing institutionalized art, he has achieved enormous fame within those very institutions.