His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stencilling technique. Such artistic works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world.
Banksy's work was made up of the Bristol underground scene which involved collaborations between artists and musicians. According to author and graphic designer, Tristan Manco, and the book Home Sweet Home, Banksy "was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. The son of a photocopier technician, he trained as a butcher, but became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s." Observers have noted that his style is similar to Blek le Rat, who began to work with stencils in 1981 in Paris, Jef Aerosol, who sprayed his first street stencil in 1982 in Tours (France), and members of the anarcho-punk band Crass, which maintained a graffiti stencil campaign on the London Tube System in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Banksy says, however, that he was inspired by "3D", a graffiti artist who later became a founding member of Massive Attack.
A Banksy mural stenciled on the side of a Hollywood gas station five years ago has fetched $209,000 (£129,000) at auction. The 9ft by 8ft work called Flower Girl shows a little girl holding a basket under the eye of a CCTV camera on a tall stalk. It was bought by a Los Angeles buyer who requested anonymity and was the highlight of a sale of 100 works by 33 street artists at Julien's Auctions in Beverly Hills, the LA Times reported.
(thanks to http://news.sky.com/story/1179022/banksy-mural-on-gas-station-wall-fetches-209k and www.wikipedia.com)
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