The notorious street artist has become a global phenomenon and big seller on the art market, but operated until now in total anonymity.

Identity of Banksy, Oscar-nominated graffiti artist, proven ‘beyond dispute’

The notorious street artist has become a global phenomenon and big seller on the art market, but operated until now in total anonymity.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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March 16, 2026 11:03 p.m. ET

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Banksy's 'Sweeping It Under the Carpet'. Credit:

Jim Dyson/Getty

One of the art world's biggest modern mysteries may have just been solved.

A new report claims to have once-and-for-all unmasked the elusive graffiti artist Banksy, who has been operating under complete anonymity since the early 1990s.

The investigation, published Friday by Reuters, combs through and eventually sets aside some of the buzzier theories as to the "Girl with Balloon" artist's true identity. Is he the Massive Attack frontman Robert Del Naja? Or the street artist Thierry Guetta, also known as Mr. Brainwash, who was the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary *Exit Through the Gift Shop*, which Banksy directed and — completely disguised, of course — also featured in?

After nearly three decades of speculation, journalists Simon Gardner, James Pearson, and Blake Morrison claim "beyond dispute" that Banksy is a man named Robin Gunningham.

Banksy's 'Love in the Bin'.

Alexander Scheuber/Getty

* *did not immediately hear back from Pest Control Office, the agency the artist founded to sell his work and respond to press requests.

The final identification started with a clue from *Banksy Captured*, a 2019 memoir from Steve Lazarides, who managed the artist from the late 1990s through 2008. The year that book was published, Lazarides posted a photo from 2000 of an "aborted Banksy work" to his Instagram — a defaced Marc Jacobs billboard in New York City that was left incomplete after authorities allegedly arrested the artist.

Police documents and a court file relating to the arrest that Reuters unearthed repeatedly make reference to Gunningham — who signed his own name at the bottom of a written confession.

Though police sought to charge Gunningham with a felony, he was released and the charges were reduced to a misdemeanor after posting $1,500 bail, temporarily turning over his passport, and completing five days of community service.

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Gunningham lived for a time at New York City's legendary Carlton Arms Hotel, which he listed as his primary residence on a bail form. He painted walls and even an entire room there in exchange for board, signing them "Robin Banks," shortened later to Banksy.

Banksy in 'Exit Through the Gift Shop'.

Paranoid Pictures

This isn't the first time Gunningham has been suspected as the real hand behind the mysterious graffiti artist. *The Daily Mail *pointed the finger at Gunningham in 2008, the same year he legally changed his name to David Jones. But suspicions persisted around figures like Del Naja, Guetta, and British politician Billy Gannon.

Banksy started out as a guerrilla artist whose quickly rendered, stencil-like illustrations with an often highly political charge garnered him instant notoriety. He has made work in innocuous corners of major metropolitan cities like London and New York City, but has also become known for provocative illustrations left in conflict zones like Ukraine and the Palestinian West Bank.

His work is owned by the likes of Brad Pitt and Chris Martin.

One of his most iconic works, "Girl with Balloon," sold at a London auction in 2018 for $1.4 million. Minutes after the sale was finalized, the work publicly self-destroyed via a shredding device hidden inside the frame. Renamed "Love is in the Bin," the work sold three years later for a record $25.4 million.

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