Piazza San Marco

SHEPARD FAIREY (Obey)

Shepard Fairey, considered one of the most well-known and influential contemporary street artists is originally from South Carolina and graduated from the Art Academy in 1988. In 1989, while explaining to a friend how to create a stencil, he asked him to make one with an image he had just seen in the newspaper. The friend refuses because he thinks the idea is stupid, but finding it amusing Shepard nevertheless decides to create the stencil with Andre The Giant’s face: thus was bor that symbol that will make Shepard Fairey known to the world under the pseudonym OBEY His fame peaked in 2008 when he created the HOPE poster with Barack Obama’s face for the U.S. presidential election (later purchased by the U.S., National Portrait Gallery). Artist, activist, graphic designer and illustrator Fairey 2001 has also been the founder of the OBEY clothing brand, which finds fertile ground in the skate scene and is for him another expressive medium on which to continue his poetics and political instances and which further consecrates him to the general public and coming out of the niche of street art.