Street art has been around for decades now, and it's one of the most popular but also amorphous genres of art today. Generations of artists to have sprung up and then disappeared, and the art form has been around long enough for a set of artists to emerge who have come to influence the overall genre. For this list, we have tried to look at artists throughout street art's history to gauge their influence on street art and art in general. The end result is our best estimate of the The 50 Most Influential Street Artists of All Time, both influential globally and in specific locales or subgenres of street art as well as over the course of street art's history. We made this list to serve as a starting point for debate. Here's our take. What's yours?
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49. MOMO and El Tono
48. The Reader
47. Cekis
46. Mr. Brainwash
45. Swampy
44. Ha-Ha
43. Roa
42. Stinkfish
41. Escif
40. El Xupet Negre
39. Anthony Lister
38. WK Interact
37. Meggs of Everfresh
36. Jaz
35. Gaia
34. INTI
32. Neck Face
31. Sam3
30. Logan Hicks
29. Dan Witz
28. Ben Eine
27. Billboard Liberation Front
24. Invader
23. JR
22. Guerrilla Girls
21. D*face
20. Miss Van
19. Jenny Holzer
18. Blu
Hometown: Columbia, S.C.
Years active: 2001 - Present
Charlie Todd's group Improv Everywhere are perhaps the less revolutionary heirs to the Situationist throne. They have organized tens of thousands of people to participate in public actions that creatively disrupt everyday lives. Improv Everywhere's annual No Pants Subway Ride had grown to epic proportions, and satellite events have sprung up in cities around the world. Improv Everywhere is influential because it reaches out and influences people who might never break the law to put up a wheat-paste, but they might get a group of twenty friends together to freeze in place in the middle of a shopping mall.
16. Ron English
15. Stephen Powers
14. Faile and Bast
13. John Fekner
12. Barry McGee
11. KAWS
10. Barbara Kruger
9. Swoon
Hometown: New York
Years active: 1970 - 1978
Although you might not see a lot of street art in the style of Gordon Matta-Clark's sliced-up buildings, the work inspired street artists like Swoon and John Fekner, sowing the seeds for the street art movement that would blossom after seeing the way that he changed public spaces and worked directly with found environments. It's easy to forget that a lot of street artists went to art school, and Matta-Clark is one of the artists that many of them would have studied.