Shepard Fairey

Shepard Fairey Biography

B. 1970, Charleston, SC, USA. Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Shepard Fairey’s 25-plus-year career started in 1989 with his “Andre the Giant has a Posse” sticker campaign that transformed into the OBEY GIANT art campaign, with imagery that has changed the way people see art and the urban landscape. In addition to his guerrilla street art presence, the artist has executed more than 50 large- scale painted public murals around the world as of 2018. His work has evolved into an acclaimed body of art, which includes the 2008 “Hope” portrait of Barack Obama in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

Fairey was born in Charleston, S.C. in 1970. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, R.I.

Fairey has exhibited internationally in institutions such as Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, South Korea; CAC Málaga Museum, Málaga, Spain; The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Charleston, SC, USA; The Public Trust, Dallas, TX, USA, Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), Cincinnati, OH, USA, Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, USA; and the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Boston, MA, USA. In 2017, he won the Art Wynwood Tony Goldman Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award.

His works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, NY, USA; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C. USA; the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA, USA; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, USA amongst others.