10 Amazing Street Artists Who Aren't Banksy

Phlegm

Born in Wales and now residing in Sheffield, England, Phlegm’s intricate work has appeared on planes, boats and buildings across the UK and beyond.  Also a cartoonist and illustrator, many of the creepy characters featured in his spray painted murals come straight from his comic work. Simultaneously whimsical and nightmarish, his bold creations shock passersby into pausing for a long stare.

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To see more visit Phlegm's website

Vhils

Using a technique he calls “reverse stenciling,” Portuguese artist Vhils subtracts the layers of concrete, paper or wood on a given wall or billboard to create a portrait with tremendous depth and contrast. In exposing what lies beneath the surface of things, he hopes to bring the humanity back to urban environments. His subjects are not actual people, but amalgamations of the everyday individuals he encounters across the globe.

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To see more visit Vhils' website

Stinkfish

This Bogotá native is a photography fiend: his stencils spring from the pictures that he takes of unsuspecting strangers who capture his attention. Spraying on the streets of his hometown for over a decade, his insanely vibrant portraits have appeared more recently in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, England, Spain and Holland. His distinctive style is created with a myriad of tools ranging from basic brushes to rollers to fire extinguishers.

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To see more visit Stinkfish's Flickr photostream

Blu

Active in the street art scene since the late 90’s, Blu’s creations are so massive in scale that these few, small images don’t quite do them justice. Known for a surrealist style that plays with the distortion of the human body, his work is often politically charged. When The Los Angeles County Museum of Art invited the Italian to make a mural in The City of Angels, he caused some outcry by painting rows of military-style coffins draped with dollar bills, instead of American flags. Recently, Blu has paired up with other artists and filmmakers to animate his wall art into amazing films.

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JR

This French artist and activist, who creates large-scale photorealistic murals, won the TED prize for his work in 2011. Hoping to humanize the “other” and speak for the disenfranchised, JR has juxtaposed giant portraits of Palestinians and Israelis on both sides of the wall that divides them; put pictures of so-called suburban “thugs” up in bourgeois Paris during the 2004 riots; and covered roofs in Kenya with pictures of the women who hold the community together but are often forgotten in the extreme poverty.

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To see more visit JR's website

El Mac

Working primarily in Los Angeles and Phoenix, many of this artist’s dynamic murals have become local landmarks. Especially awe-inspiring are his colorful collaborations with talented pal Retna, who creates the intricate and ancient-looking glyphs in the background of El Mac’s murals. A painter who’s studied since childhood, El Mac cites a wide range of inspiration including Mexican/Chicano culture, pin-up posters, religious iconography and classic artists like Caravaggio, Mucha and Vermeer.

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To see more visit El Mac's website

Os Gêmeos

Technically two artists who go by one name, the twin brothers behind Os Gêmeos (“The Twins” in Portuguese) have a distinctly São Paulo graffiti style influenced by American hip hop culture and Brazilian folklore. The whimsical characters and surreal worlds they create, often with a socio-political message in mind, have gained them notoriety in both the street and modern art worlds. In fact, recent canvas paintings by the two went for $20,000 each at Art Basel Miami Beach, one of the most renowned contemporary art events in the U.S.

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To see more visit Os Gêmeos' website

Nosbe

Parisian street fiend Nosbe’s psychedelic faces trapped in seemingly endless patterns will make you feel like someone slipped acid into your morning coffee. The hypnotizing artist must like his privacy because personal information about the guy is hard to come by: he doesn’t have a website and avoids interviews. Some of Nosbe’s best work comes from his collaborations with an amazing 3D graffitist named Shaka, featured next.

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Shaka

A serious player on the French graffiti scene, Shaka works on both walls and canvas to create hyper-real paintings that explode with color. A master of multi-dimensions, he sketches his murals on paper to help himself fragment the space to allow for the greatest possible depth and volume. Undeniably breathtaking, Shaka’s work can also be unsettling: his characters seem to be pushing out from the wall in a restless attempt to free themselves from the confines of the image.

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To see more visit Shaka's website

Blek Le Rat

Called “The Father of Stencil Graffiti,” Blek Le Rat was posting politicized stencil art on the walls of Paris in the early 80’s, when Banksy was still in grade school. In his first deviant art act Blek Le Rat covered Paris in what became his signature symbol, an oversized rat. His large-scale works employ the same dark humor and irony later adopted by Banksy. Though in his 60’s, the Frenchman is still hard at work on both outdoor and indoor projects.

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