Graffiti virtuosos like Banksy have elevated what some people consider a form of vandalism into valuable art. In fact, street art is highly sought-after by collectors, with the most coveted pieces commanding millions of dollars a pop.
Click or scroll through our gallery to feast your eyes on some seriously cool street art and discover who the wealthiest graffiti artist in the world is. Spoiler alert: it's not who you think. All dollar amounts in US dollars unless otherwise stated.
A key member of the underground art scene in Bristol, England, Nick Walker is renowned for his stencil graffiti technique.
This style was pioneered in the 1980s by Robert "3D" Del Naja, who was part of the Wild Bunch music collective and went on to co-found seminal trip hop group Massive Attack.
Along with Del Naja, Walker is an old spray-mate of Banksy's, and one of the mysterious artist's chief inspirations.
Many of Walker's most memorable works feature "Vandal", a subversive bowler hat-clad gentleman who is believed to represent the artist himself.
Walker made a name for himself in the 1990s, attracting the attention of legendary movie director Stanley Kubrick.
Kubrick asked the Bristolian to recreate the graffiti-scrawled streets of New York for his last movie, 1999's Eyes Wide Shut.
Walker's work shot up in value during the 2000s. In 2006, for example, Moona Lisa, his cheeky take on the Da Vinci masterpiece, sold for 10 times its estimated price at auction, netting him £54,000.
In today's money, that's the equivalent of £75,400 ($91.1k).
A couple of years later, Walker held an exhibition at London's Black Rat Gallery.
He sold art worth a total of £750,000 – £966,400 ($1.2m) in today's money – with devoted fans even camping outside the gallery overnight to bolster their chances of glimpsing his work.
Today, Walker's net worth is estimated to be around $1.5 million (£1.2m).
Growing up in LA, Retna, born Marquis Lewis, was inspired by the graffiti that adorned his home city's freeways.
In 1996, the budding urban artist chose the pseudonym "Retna" after being inspired by the lyrics of a Wu Tang Clan song.
Retna went on to head up one of the city's most respected collectives and during the late 1990s, the graffiti pro grabbed the attention of the art world.
By the early 2000s, his work was being exhibited at prestigious shows around the globe.
Over the years, Retna has developed a unique constructed script style that draws inspiration from Egyptian hieroglyphics, as well as Arabic, Hebrew, and Asian calligraphy.
The artist is also influenced by the trailblazing graffiti artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.
Following a series of successful collaborations, Retna held his first solo show in 2011.
Urban music star Usher commissioned the artist to produce a portrait of Marvin Gaye later that year, and in 2015 Retna designed the artwork for Justin Bieber's Purpose album cover.
Retna's most valuable artwork, Untitled 2011, fetched a relatively modest $48,000 at auction in 2014, which is around $60,000 (£49.6k) today.
The bulk of his estimated $5 million (£4.1m) fortune has come from lucrative advertising commissions. He counts Louis Vuitton, Nike, and airline company VistaJet among his discerning clientele.
During the mid-80s, die-hard skater Shepard Fairey began producing street art in the form of stickers that he slapped on walls and stop signs in his home town of Charleston, South Carolina.
In 1989, his Andre the Giant Has a Posse sticker was adopted by skateboarders across the US, and evolved into the famous "Obey Giant" campaign.
Fairey put his talents to good use during the 90s and the dollars began to roll in.
In 1997, he co-founded the successful design studio BLK/MRKT Inc., which had a particular specialism in guerrilla marketing and worked with clients like Pepsi and Netscape.
Meanwhile, the value of his artwork continued to rise over the course of the decade.
In 2001, Fairey launched the OBEY clothing brand. The following year saw him put on his first solo exhibition, Overnight Delivery, which was well-received by critics.
In 2003, he co-founded the Studio Number One design agency with his wife, and worked on projects such as the album artwork for the Black Eyed Peas and movie posters.
Fairey's iconic Barack Obama "Hope" poster gained him national acclaim in 2008, despite some legal difficulties over the fair use of the image.
An activist artist, much of Fairey's work is notable for the political "power to the people" theme behind it.
Fairey's work has appeared in collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and London's Victoria & Albert Museum.
His most valuable artwork, War is Over, sold for $71,700 at a Parisian auction in 2013, or $91,000 (£75.4k) in 2022 dollars.
Today, Fairey is estimated to be worth somewhere between $10 million (£8.3m) and $15 million (£12.4m).
Some critics think this accidental artist is an elaborate prank or perhaps even a meta art installation courtesy of Banksy.
However, Mr. Brainwash (MBW, and also known as Thierry Guetta), seems real enough, and started his career as a filmmaker by videoing LA street artists in the mid 2000s.
MBW was encouraged to pick up the spray cans and stencils by his buddy Banksy, who MBW met while filming the artist's Exit Through the Gift Shop documentary.
MBW turned his back on filmmaking in 2008 and set about creating his debut art exhibition, Life is Beautiful. He hired a studio in Hollywood and employed 12 assistants to help him pull it together.
A master of hype, MBW badgered Banksy for a quote to help promote the show.
Banksy half-jokingly described the artist as "a force of nature" and "a phenomenon", and MBW covered billboards around LA with huge banners emblazoned with these words. Needless to say, the crowds flocked, and a street art star was born.
The audacious promo worked a treat, and MBW sold artwork worth around $1 million (£827k) in just a few weeks.
Some critics have since speculated whether Banksy was behind the whole thing but he maintains that MBW is the real deal.
MBW's work is unashamedly derivative: he rips off fellow street artists and copies iconic pop-art pieces by artists such as Andy Warhol. However, none of this has dented his popularity.
MBW has designed a Madonna album cover, put on major shows around the world, and raked in millions of dollars from auction sales, private commissions, and other money-making collaborations.
A household name, Banksy famously chooses to remain anonymous, and his real identity is much speculated upon.
Inspired by Robert "3D" Del Naja, Nick Walker, and the French street artist Blek le Rat, Banksy emerged from Bristol's underground art scene in the late 90s.
Banksy created his first large wall mural, The Mild Mild West, free-hand in 1999.
By 2000, he had discovered stencilling and the rest is history. People began to spot his signature satirical designs around Bristol and London and in 2002, Banksy put on his first show in LA.
The enigmatic street artist continued to show his work during the early 2000s, gaining acclaim from the public and art world alike.
In 2006, singer Christina Aguilera snapped up Queen Victoria as a Lesbian for £25,000, which is around £34,900 ($42k) today.
In October 2021, Banksy achieved his highest sale price to-date when his Love In The Bin fetched a whopping £18.6 million ($22.4m) at auction.
The original artwork, titled Girl with Balloon, famously partially shredded itself in 2018 when a multi-million bid was accepted at Sotheby's London.
As prolific as he is mysterious, Banksy made a documentary film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, in 2010, and five years later created his own warped theme park, named Dismaland, in Weston-super-Mare in England.
As for his identity, the jury is still out. However, many people believe that Banksy is really Robert "3D" Del Naja.
David Choe is nowhere near as well-known as Banksy and his artworks command a fraction of the price.
So you'd be forgiven for wondering how on earth this talented graffiti artist has managed to amass such a colossal fortune...
A native of LA, Choe developed a distinctive graffiti style in his teens and honed his skills at art college in the late 90s.
Post-graduation, he turned his attention to comic books and magazine illustration.
Powerful and bold, Choe's kaleidoscopic artworks often depict aggressive scenes, and the artist is known for his confrontational attitude.
In 2005, he was sent to jail for somewhere between two and three months after assaulting an undercover police officer while in Japan.
Choe got his lucky break in 2005 when he was asked to produce a mural for Facebook's HQ.
The artist chose to be paid in stocks rather than cash, despite the fact that he dismissed the social network as a "ridiculous and pointless" endeavour.
Those stocks skyrocketed in value and at Facebook's IPO in 2012, Choe's shares were worth $200 million (£165.8m). He essentially became unfathomably rich overnight.
Today, he's estimated to be worth around $300 million (£248.7m), making him the richest street artist in the world – and then some.
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