BANKSY (Bristol, England, 1975). Lot n° 1

BANKSY (Bristol, England, 1975). "Difaced tenner (10 pound note)".2004. Offset lithography. Size: 10 x 15 x 2 cm. In 2004, British street artist and perennial prankster Banksy printed £1 million worth of Di-Faced Tenner bills. A riff on a "defaced" ten-dollar bill, Banksy's Di-Faced Tenner replaces an image of Queen Elizabeth II with that of the late Lady Diana, issued by the "Banksy of England." With Charles Darwin on the reverse, it also proclaims, "Trust no one." Banksy has rained banknotes on crowds of people at Notting Hill and Reading festivals, and "spilled" a briefcase full of banknotes at Liverpool tube station in London during rush hour. The British Museum acquired a Di-Faced Tenner bill in 2019, where it joined the coins and metals collection and represented Banksy's first acquisition for the museum. Banksy, the British artist whose identity is still unknown, is considered one of the leading exponents of contemporary Street Art. According to a study by Queen Mary University of London published in March 2016, Robin Gunningham, a neighbor of Bristol, would be the artist behind Banksy's pseudonym, however this fact has not been proven, as the artist opted for the privacy of his identity since the beginning of his career. Thus questioning the limits that exist between art and legality, from a new perspective different from that of other graffiti artists. His works address universal themes such as politics, culture or ethics, mostly treated from a satirical and ironic point of view, combining writing with graffiti with the use of stencils, which are stencils previously made, which allow a greater speed when painting in the street. This technique is similar to the one used by Blek le Rat, who started working with stencils in 1981 in Paris. In fact, Banksy acknowledged Blek's influence by stating that "every time I think I've painted something slightly original, I realize that Blek le Rat did it better, only twenty years earlier." Banksy's popularity, has not only been due to his art, but also to the way he conceives and exhibits it. Example of this is the creation of Dismaland in 2016, or the self-destruction of his work at Sotheby's in 2018. Thus demonstrating that his art plays with the concept of the subversive, oscillating between the urban and the market in an ironic way.