Banksy Unmasked: Investigation Claims To Reveal Artist’s Secret Identification
Cybercrime
Since his appearance on the art scene within the Nineteen Eighties, Banksy has remained nameless, keeping his identity hidden whilst he changed into regarded as one of many most effectively-known avenue artists within the field. Nevertheless a brand new Reuters investigation from Simon Gardner, James Pearson, and Blake Morrison claims to indulge in published the actual person within the lend a hand of works equivalent to “Lady with Balloon” and “Napalm.”
According to the account, Banksy is Robin Gunningham, a graffiti artist born in Bristol in 1973 who later changed his name to David Jones. That is the an identical particular person named in a 2008 account from The Mail on Sunday, which wrote then that it had “reach as shut as anyone presumably can to revealing” who Banksy was once.
A Banksy mural on September 09, 2025 in London, England.
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
A turning point within the investigation came from graffiti made by the artist in Ukrainian village of Horenka, shut to Kiev, amongst buildings destroyed by shelling. According to witnesses who spoke with Reuters, the works were allegedly created interior minutes by two males with lined faces the utilization of spray cans and stencils. Reuters investigators linked Gunningham, who by then was once going as David Jones, to plod to that build of abode—working in partnership, the outlet suggests, with Huge Attack frontman Robert Del Naja, but every other man who some indulge in speculated is Banksy.
Del Naja is rarely at all times in truth Banksy, Reuters experiences, nevertheless has likely partnered with him on projects all around the years, including the work in Ukraine. “The Mail on Sunday had been shapely in 2008 in making the case that Gunningham was once Banksy,” Reuters writes. Nevertheless by changing his name to regarded as one of many most in type monikers within the UK, the artist thwarted later efforts to verify the Mail‘s claims.
An artwork by Banksy on October 6, 2011 in London, England.
Jim Dyson/Getty Images
In an announcement, Banksy’s longtime authorized loyal Tag Stephens advised Reuters the artist “would now not rep that a variety of the significant functions contained interior your enquiry are shapely.” He also questioned the value of the investigation, saying that as Banksy “been subjected to fixated, threatening and extremist behavior,” and that keeping his merely self beneath wraps is a necessity.
“[Working] anonymously or beneath a pseudonym serves significant societal interests,” Stephens persevered. “It protects freedom of expression by allowing creators to talk reality to energy with out bother of retaliation, censorship or persecution—namely when addressing sensitive disorders equivalent to politics, faith or social justice.”
