For 30 years, Banksy has continued to intrigue fans by keeping his identity a secret.
Now a passerby has captured photographs he believes show Banksy at the site of a recent mural in Finsbury Park, London, on Saturday, March 23. The photos, which have only just surfaced, show a man with short hair and glasses, clad in a black Nike hoodie, standing before the now-famous painting of a lifesize woman holding a pressure washer beside a huge spray of green foliage.
Banksy has claimed the work as his own, sparking great excitement amongst those in the area, and many were dismayed when, days later, the artwork was defaced with streaks of white paint. The photographer, who wishes to remain anonymous, says he had 'a gut feeling' he was looking at the mystery artist when he snapped the pics of the bespectacled man.
He revealed: "I noticed the man in a black hoodie who seemed to have finished his work hand over a box to an assistant in a grey checked flannel shirt with grey hair. He then started to climb over the fence I had a gut feeling that it could be a Banksy mural and that was Banksy himself. I quickly focused on taking pictures of him he looked at me with an expression which seemed to say 'I've have been spotted'. He quickly left the scene in a black van parked near the mural'."
Like other sightings, however, this is just speculation, and there is no evidence the man in the pic is actually Banksy. This comes as Banksy confirms a mural painted in Birmingham's Gay Village wasn't his handiwork. The painting in question, which is very much in Banksy's style, shows Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz leaping up to reach a pair of ruby high heels that had been slung high up on an electric cable.
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Banksy issued an eight-word reply, saying: "This work is not by the artist Banksy." With interest in the world's most famous street artist just as strong as ever, we take a look at who Banksy really is, and everything we know about a man whose unknowability is just as legendary as his work...
A man wearing a black hoodie was also spotted near the muralLast month, locals admiring his latest tree-themed painting claimed a man who turned up on the scene could have been the real Banksy. A man said to bear a striking resemblance to former public schoolboy Robin Gunningham - long said to be Banksy - was spotted beside the piece on the morning of Saturday, March 23.
The photos were taken beside the latest mural, which appeared on a wall in Hornsey Road on March 17 before later being vandalised with streaks of white paint. The mystery man in question has since come forward to confirm that he isn't Banksy, and is in fact a 67-year-old retired builder by the name of George Georgiou.
Speaking with the Mail Online, George confessed that he doesn't have much of an artistic temperament, and that his first thought upon seeing the mural was 'what a bloody mess'. George revealed: "No, I am not Banksy. Unfortunately it ain't me, I wish it was but I am not that lucky. When I first saw it I thought 'what a bloody mess' but when you see it in context with the tree, it is a really smart idea. The guy has obviously got a vision, he knows what he's doing, would I have thought of it? Not in a month of Sundays."
He continued: "I am just not artistic. You give me a hammer and some nails, I'll make you something but a drawing no? Matchstick men I am good at. We spent a good hour laughing about it [the claim he was Banksy] this morning. No one knows who he is."
However, this is not the first time Robing Gunningham's name has been associated with Banksy and his street murals.
The man spotted by the latest large Banksy mural that passersby think is the elusive graffiti artist (/ SWNS)The name Robin Gunningham was first revealed by a Mail On Sunday investigation in 2008 which reported that he is a former public schoolboy from Bristol. The newspaper published a photograph taken in Jamaica in 2004 showing a man with a bag of spray cans by his feet - he was identified as Mr Gunningham. Banksy is also believed to have gone by the name Robin Banks, and in 2017 the DJ Goldie referred to him in an interview on the Distraction Pieces podcast as 'Rob'.
Some graffiti fans think Banksy has been spotted at the scene of his latest work (/ SWNS)A local Banksy fan who took the pictures told the Daily Mail: "I have been going to the mural for a whole week. On Saturday there were more security fences and CCTV up and a few people putting Perspex over the artwork. I went back at 10am to go have another look at what they were doing and saw this man who looks exactly like the photo I saw 20 years ago of Banksy. I found it weird he was putting up his own Perspex."
Banksy has also been linked with Massive Attack musician Robert Del Naja, also known as 3D who was once considered to be the city's first graffiti artist and a pioneer of the stencil art movement. The musician has been praised by Banksy as an early influence and the pair are said to be friends. However, fans were left convinced they could be one and the same after singer Goldie 'let slip' Rob's name while mentioning Banksy in a 2017 podcast interview.
Many believe that Robin Gunningham, pictured, is Banksy (YouTube)Whoever, the mystery man is, what we do know is that Banksy was born in Bristol in 1974, making him roughly 50, and was involved in the wave of street art that took Bristol by storm in the 1980s before bringing his work to London, LA, and New York. His net worth is said to be $50million (£39.6million), according to Celebrity Net Worth - though he donates much of it to charity, instead keeping his income from sales of books and films about his work
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Meanwhile, Banksy has some famous fans - he's sold works to singer Christina Aguilera, who owns a pornographic picture of Queen Victoria with a prostitute. Angelina Jolie owns his twist on a Manet painting in which a white family lunch under an umbrella watched by 15 starving Africans. The artist also created the artwork for Blur's 2003 album Think Tank and his Girl With Balloon painting self-destructed in a Sotheby's London saleroom when descending into a shredder in 2018.
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