Illegal and unsolicited street art is the essence of Banksy.

There are many ways to categorise Banksy’s street art. The following is one way to look at it. We can observe that the street art pieces can be classified into two different ‘categories’:

Standalone pieces, i.e., one piece in one place at one time.
Series of street art pieces done at the same time in the same place. We can call these runs ‘street art blitzes’.

Geographically and chronologically, Banksy’s street art can be roughly divided into three periods:

1994–2000: Hundreds of standalone pieces in the Bristol area
2000–2004: Hundreds of standalone pieces in the London area, but also a few in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Copenhagen, Tokyo, and Naples.
2005 and onwards: The major part of his work outside the UK, after 2005, has been done as a series of three or more pieces in one place in the same run—”street art blitzes”.

Street art blitzes:

2001: Chiapas, Mexico
2001: Barcelona, among them Barcode and the Girl with Gasmask.
August 2005: Palestine: nine large murals. Consolidated Banksy as a political artist.
September 2006: Los Angeles, several pieces to promote the upcoming Barely Legal.
December 2007: Palestine, several street art pieces, among them the Armoured Peace Dove and a large version of Love is in the Air.
August 2008: New Orleans, eleven pieces
September 2008: New York, several big pieces on billboards to promote the upcoming NY exhibition
January 2009: Mali, six pieces, among them the Zebra
January 2010: US and Canada: Grand street art tour to promote the film Exit Through the Gift Shop, approximately 20 pieces in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sundance, Salt Lake City, Toronto, and New York
February 2011: Los Angeles: Street art blitz following the Oscars, where Exit Through the Gift Shop was nominated. for Best Documentary.
July 2012: Street art blitz in London with an Olympic theme
October 2013: New York. Better Out Than In: A major blitz with 29 pieces in New York during October
February 2015: Blitz with five pieces inside the Gaza strip.
December 2015: Calais, France. Blitz with four stencils
March 2018: New York. Blitz with five new pieces, among them the Zehra Dougan mural.
June 2018: Paris. Major blitz with at least eight confirmed pieces
July 2020: London. Covid-inspired blitz in the London Underground
August 2021: Great Yarmouth, UK. The Spraycation series of ten stencils 200 km northeast of London.
November 2022: Ukraine. Blitz with seven pieces around Kiev.

Banksy hasn’t done anything in South America, only one visit to Africa, and none in Asia except Palestina and maybe one or two pieces in Tokyo. In other words, the bulk of Banksy’s street art can be found on the same axis as his big exhibitions: Palestine, the London area, Bristol, New York, and Los Angeles. The geographical outliers are the Ukraine and the Mali blitz.

Here are the street art blitzes in images:

2001. Chiapas Mexico

Banksy joined a Bristol football team, the Easton Cowboys, on their second tour of Chiapas in 2001:

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ca 2001. Barcelona, among them Girl with gasmask plucking petals

Banksy’s first manager was Steve Earl, a guy from Wakefield. Around 2001, Steve Earl and Banksy broke up; Earl left London for Barcelona, and Steve Lazarides, then Banksy’s photographer and driver, took over as manager. Could this have something to do with Banksy’s visit to Barcelona in 2001? Steve Earl died tragically in Barcelona in 2007 due to a brain haemorrhage.

The most well-known piece from Barcelona is the Girl with Gasmask plucking petals. Banksy describes on page 147 of Wall and Piece an adventurous night in the Barcelona Zoo. He also did a Barcode Leopard in Barcelona, but I haven’t found any good pictures of that one.

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August 2005. Palestine – nine large murals.

Sam Jones of The Guardian reported on Banksy’s visit to Palestine on 5 August 2005:

Israel describes it as a vital security barrier, while the UN says it’s illegal. But as far as the guerrilla graffiti artist Banksy is concerned, the 425-mile long barrier that separates Israel from the Palestinian territories is a vast concrete canvas too tempting to resist. The subversive dauber, who has terrorised galleries on both sides of the Atlantic and who last year installed a very sexed-up bronze spoof of the Old Bailey’s statue of Justice in central London, has ventured further afield for his latest project. Packing his stencils and spray cans, he went to the Middle East to share his vision with those living on the Palestinian side. His visit is recorded in the nine stencilled pictures, some surreal, some poignant, he left on the gigantic barrier. His latest work was on his website yesterday, labelled “holiday snaps”.

Although the paintings themselves are not overtly political, his feelings about the wall are apparent from his statement: “The Israeli government is building a wall surrounding the occupied Palestinian territories. It stands three times the height of the Berlin Wall and will eventually run for over 700km – the distance from London to Zurich. The wall is illegal under international law and essentially turns Palestine into the world’s largest open prison.” But he concedes: “It also makes it the ultimate activity holiday destination for graffiti writers.”

One of the pictures shows two gleeful children with bucket and spade standing beneath a hole in the wall that opens on to a vista of a tropical paradise. In another, he has transformed the wall into a cosy sitting room complete with two enormous armchairs and a window that frames an alpine landscape. Other pictures show a little boy kneeling at the foot of a rope ladder that snakes to the top of the wall and the silhouette of a girl rising through the air clutching balloons. The barrier, which is made of concrete walls and razor-wire fences, has been cited as illegal by the UN, which has ordered it dismantled, though Israel says the wall protects it against suicide bombers.

Jo Brooks, his spokeswoman, said there had been some hairy moments at the barrier. “The Israeli security forces did shoot in the air threateningly and there were quite a few guns pointed at him.”

Banksy also records on his website how an old Palestinian man said his painting made the wall look beautiful. Banksy thanked him, only to be told: “We don’t want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall. Go home.”

From: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/aug/05/israel.artsnews

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September 2006. Los Angeles, several pieces to promote Barely Legal.

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December 2007. Palestine, several street art pieces, among them the Armoured peace dove.

Banksy returned to the Palestine side of the segregation wall in December 2007 to do the Santas Ghetto in Bethlehem, just 10 km south of Jerusalem. Rory McCarthy of the Guardian reported on Banksy’s second show in Palestine on 3 December 2007:

Banksy in Bethlehem: a sudden, provocative comeback

The graffiti artist Banksy was conspicuous by his absence today at the opening of a new exhibition of his work and that of many other artists in the unlikely setting of the West Bank town of Bethlehem. But in the past week his provocative, stencilled images made a sudden comeback to the walls of the Holy Land.

Driving down from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem towards the main checkpoint leading into Jerusalem, I found a sign showing a tow-truck making off with a tank, and nearby the black silhouette of an Israeli soldier checking the identity papers of a donkey. Then, closer to the West Bank wall, there’s a white dove, dressed in a bullet-proof jacket with a target centred on its chest. On a concrete block at the foot of the wall itself there’s now a graffiti of a rat armed with a small wooden slingshot and opposite Bethlehem’s much underused Intercontinental Hotel is one of Banksy’s most striking new images: a young girl in ponytails and a pink dress frisking a soldier as if at a checkpoint.

The Bristol-born “Guerrilla artist” has been here before – two years ago he produced several stencilled scenes on the Palestinian side of the wall. The paint is fading on them now, but the vast concrete and steel barrier continues to grow and is as controversial as ever. Now more than half complete, it is projected to run to 721km (448 miles) and when finished will place 10 per cent of the West Bank on the “Israeli” side. Israel has rejected a 2004 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice which ruled the barrier was illegal where it crossed into the West Bank and should be torn down.

It’s not the first graffiti on the wall and most Palestinians seemed not particularly moved by the new artworks yesterday. Occasionally a tourist bus would stop to let someone pop out for a quick snap.

The main exhibition is three floors of striking artwork by Palestinians and foreign artists in a building marked Santa’s Ghetto on Bethlehem’s Manger Square. Outside, by way of welcome, stood a donkey whose rider was a stuffed but empty headed dummy wearing traditional Palestinian dress – an artwork by the American Mark Jenkins. Inside, there were several small military watchtowers carved out of olive wood.

I asked the Palestinian artist Suleiman Mansour what he made of the graffiti on the wall. “For some people it could be a gimmick, for others it might make a difference,” he said. Mansour has been working as an artist since the 1960s and remembers a time when Palestinians were banned from painting in red, green or white – the colours of their flag. “The Palestinian problem is full of contradictions and strange things: it’s like heaven for artists,” he said. “For westerners it’s important they see the Palestinian problem interpreted through art. It’s not like newspaper articles or speeches, art is something much stronger in getting a message to people.” Mansour has several paintings on show, including one of a man carrying the entire city of Jerusalem on his back and another of a woman’s face sculpted out of dried, cracked mud.

Peter Kennard, an artist from London, had on show a newspaper and photo montage he put together last week with Kat Phillips. He had printed a vast dollar bill on a series of pages from the Jerusalem Post reporting on the Middle East conference at Annapolis. The pages were torn away to reveal old photographic images of Palestinian history and culture.

“The image people get from here is of violence and we wanted to show the history and the culture is so rich,” said Kennard. “Creativity is something that’s never talked about in the media when they talk about Palestinians.”

The artwork at Santa’s Ghetto is for sale, with proceeds going to local charities.

As reported by the Guardian on 3 December 2007: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/artblog/2007/dec/03/banksyinbethlehem

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August 2008. New Orleans

As reported by Natalie Hanman in the Guardian on 1 September 2008:

Street artist Banksy has taken his trade to the streets of New Orleans, as the city remembers those whose lives were destroyed by hurricane Katrina three years ago – and the country braves itself for another storm in hurricane Gustav, which hit the US Gulf coast this morning.

The graffiti artist’s latest creations of more than a dozen murals – which include depictions of a young boy flying a fridge like a kite and Abraham Lincoln as a homeless man – adorn buildings around the city, according to the New York Times.

A statement released by Banksy reveals that they were created in response to Fred Radtke aka the “Grey Ghost”, an anti-graffiti campaigner who uses grey paint to cover up street art. The statement also said: “Three years after Katrina I wanted to make a statement about the state of the cleanup operation.”

From: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2008/sep/01/graffiti

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September 2008. New York, several big pieces on billboards to promote the upcoming NY exhibition

As reported by David Itzkoff in New York Times on 1 October 2008:

Has the elusive British graffiti artist Banksy struck New York again? On Wednesday pedestrians and bloggers were abuzz that a new mural project going up in SoHo was the handiwork of Banksy, the pseudonymous street artist. The mural, depicting what appeared to be a rat toting an umbrella, seemed to repeat a motif seen in another mural recently painted on a wall at Grand and Wooster Streets, that of a rat in an “I ♥ NY” T-shirt. That work was believed to be a collaboration between Banksy and the outdoor advertising company Colossal Media, which put up both murals and had no comment on Banksy’s involvement.

David Choe, an artist represented by Lazarides Galleries, which also handles Banksy’s art, identified the murals as Bansky’s. A representative for Banksy did not reply to questions sent via an e-mail message.

A New York show of works from the Lazarides Galleries in London has been running at the exhibition space 282 Bowery since Friday and is scheduled to close on Oct. 12. Over the weekend in London, five works attributed to Banksy that he declined to authenticate failed to sell at an auction.

From https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/arts/design/02bank.html

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January 2009: Mali, six pieces, among them the Zebra

As reported by Mark Westall of FAD Magazine:

“Banksy murals have turned up in some unlikely places, but the latest, Mali, is further-flung than usual. Drawings and photos of the anonymous street artist’s work adorn a re-creation of his studio in the current crowd-pleasing exhibition “Bristol Museum vs. Banksy,” and among them are a number of pictures of Banksy murals in the West African country. Images include two figures hunting a large animal, possibly a bison, with bow and arrow; a woman hanging laundry on a line while a zebra stands by; a child staring out at the viewer from inside a a small metal washing tub; and a young girl with a yellow bird.

But could the pictures of the murals simply be illusions, since illusions are a trademark of Banksy’s work? A member of the Banksy Flickr Group says no, he has seen at least one of them in person in the suburbs of Bamako. “There are a handful in Mali, stretching from Bamako to Timbuktu,” writes Flickr user Olly C, adding that they were created four or five months ago and that their locations remain unpublicized. via (ARTinfo).”

From: https://fadmagazine.com/2009/07/17/banksy-murals-spotted-in-mali/