The 50 Most Influential Street Artists of All Time

Image via Complex Original

Hometown: Houston
Years active: 2005 - Present

Although she wasn't the first artist to knit, Magda Sayeg was the original yarnbomber. It's hard to imagine that yarnbombing only began in 2005. In less than a decade, the practice has spread around the world and inspired countless artists and crafters to use yarn outdoors. Although we have been vocal critics of yarnbombing in the past, it's hard to deny the influence of Sayeg and the Knitta, Please collective that she founded.

Hometown: MOMO: San Francisco / El Tono: Paris
Years active: MOMO: 1999 - Present / El Tono: 1989 - Present / As a duo: 2008 - Present

El Tono was a pioneer for the trend of abstract street art that is now bubbling to the surface, and while MOMO came along a bit later, the duo have since collaborated and both contributed a lot to street art. These two are "artists' artists," people who other artists admire and keep in the back of their minds even if they aren't household names yet. Today MOMO and El Tono are at the forefront of the growing abstract style of street art. From small interventions to massive murals, these two are already influencing the shape of street art and will undoubtedly inspire the next generation.

Hometown: U.S.A.
Years active: Unknown - Present

One of the more mysterious figures in the scene today, The Reader (aka ReadMoreBooks, aka Boans, aka Rancour, aka OYE, aka probably some other names too) gets up like a graffiti writer, but like a street artist, he appears to have a purpose beyond fame and writing his name. So far, his greatest influence has probably been getting a lot of mainstream street artists to try out paint rollers. He has also become the standard for a group of street artists coming out of left field who like to stay off the grid and float around between graffiti and street art without ever fully embracing the capitalistic culture of either genre.

Hometown: Santiago, Chile
Years active: 1993 - Present

Because it seems that many artists came up together, it can be difficult to pinpoint many leaders for the South American street art community besides Os Gemeos, but Cekis was one of the early graffiti artists in Chile and clearly helped to set the stage for the vibrant scene there today. Cekis' murals are reminiscent of traditional muralism and have a strong populist and social realist flavor, but with a contemporary twist. Cekis' commissioned works have ranged from a piece in a Santiago subway station to a mural for Cop Watch informing people about their rights to monitor the police.

Hometown: Paris
Years active: 2006 - Present

Love him or hate him, the influence Thierry Guetta (aka Mr. Brainwash) has had on street art is undeniable. Unlike many of the other street artists featured here who worked their way to the top from humble beginnings, Guetta's career as a street artist was jump started with the urging and support of super-stars like Shepard Fairey, Banksy, and Invader (who is his cousin). Although many people laugh at the hollowness of his artwork, Mr. Brainwash has had a powerful, yet negative, influence on street art. He relies almost entirely on assistants to do all the grunt work of actually creating a piece, and collectors pay huge sums of money for what are often pretty terrible and clearly overly hyped artworks. Mr. Brainwash has unfortunately inspired many artists (particularly in LA) to start putting up their own hollow street art with the goal of capitalizing on the street art trend.

Hometown: Oakland
Years active: Unknown - Present

Swampy straddles the lines between graffiti, street art and conceptual art. His strict anonymity has kept many details of his personal life unknown, but he has developed a cult following for posting photos of his freight-hopping adventures across the country, similar to Mike Brodie (aka The Polaroid Kidd). His signature horned skull moniker is painted from coast to coast, on trains, rooftops, sidewalks, and even tattooed on a number of people. The intrigue around this mysterious character is in his ability to turn places into landmarks of both time and location, by tagging them along his journeys. Much like The Reader, Swampy is one of the best-known street artists doing work that is just out of left field and still a bit underground. Such work is inspiring street artists to reevaluate the role that they play in society as the genre gets more and more socially accepted, co-opted by capitalism, and further away from mark-making and human connections.

Hometown: Hamilton, New Zealand
Years active: 2000 - Present

Regan Tamanui (aka Ha-Ha) was one of the earliest active and most prolific Melbourne stencil artists. Often, what it takes to start a scene is a critical mass that allows a community to grow exponentially after that point. As one of the most prolific artists in one of the most prolific scenes in the world, Ha-Ha certainly helped Melbourne reach that critical mass. While some of his stencils (usually portraits, the most famous: Australian icon and outlaw Ned Kelly) may look simple compared to the complex and multi-layered stencils that have become popular, it's said that Ha-Ha not only hand-cuts his stencils, but he doesn't use Photoshop to edit his images into a stencil-ready format.

Hometown: Ghent, Belgium
Years active: Unknown - Present

Roa only came onto the international street art scene in 2008 or 2009, but his talent was already clear. His arrival on the global stage seems to have marked the start of the trend towards street art festivals, large-scale murals, and the version of the globetrotting street artist. His artwork depicts the life and decomposition process of various animals, often on a massive scale, using predominantly black, white, and red. Despite the difficulties of considering placement for such large-scale pieces, Roa often incorporates the existing architecture of the places he paints into his work. He also often chooses animals native to the location where he is painting. Also, Roa uses found objects as canvases for his indoor shows, which typically have an interactive quality. Roa directly inspired many artists to become globe-trotting creators, travelling from mural festival to mural festival. Roa's insatiable drive to paint and travel and his willingness to knock on a few doors has played a significant role in the transition from illegal street art to contemporary murals that so many artists are taking advantage of today.

Hometown: Bogota, Colombia
Years active: 2003 - Present

Stinkfish is one of the quintessential figures in the Colombian street art scene. He does a bit of everything, from rollers, to wheat-pastes, to stencils, to stickers, and he is one of the founding members of APC crew. But his colorful portraiture popularized the use of stencils in the area. His work engages the community in that he takes pictures of strangers who he passes on the street and makes them the subject of his murals. Throughout most of his art career, he painted in South America but in the last couple of years, he's traveled and put up his work in places all over the world.

Hometown: Valencia, Spain
Years active: Mid-2000s - Present

Escif's murals can both be viewed quickly and at the same time understood as conceptual art. As street artists try to break beyond the bounds of the one-hit wonder or the instant-gratification of a quick pun while still maintaining a fan base and steady mural opportunities, many are looking to Escif to lead the way.

Hometown: Barcelona, Spain
Years active: 1991 - Present

While freight moniker writing has a long history of characters, it's somewhat different from the modern tradition of using a logo or a character to work in that grey area between street art and graffiti. Many of the artists now using logos and characters in that grey area, particularly artists in Europe—like Pez, M. Chat, Chanoir, Pure Evil, and members of the Burning Candy crew—have El Xupet Negre to thank for pioneering the style and keeping it up for over 20 years now.

Hometown: Brisbane, Australia
Years active: Unknown - Present

Within Australia's flourishing art scene, Lister is one of the most prominent artists. From portraits of superheroes to ballerinas that dance off the canvas, his scrawling, scraggly, and scratchy figures are rough and yet somehow elegant. He's looked to as one of the best painters in street art anywhere in the world.

Hometown: Caen, France
Years active: 1993 - Present

Like COST and REVS, WK Interact is influential for two reasons: 1. He's got talent and a compelling style, and 2. He was in the right place at the right time. People like Shepard Fairey were seeing WK's work on the street when they were first getting up. WK's work is about motion, and he has a knack for making static images that still seem to be full of power and movement. To this day, the raw energy that his black and white wheat-pastes exude cause people to stop in their tracks, and so WK Interact continues to inspire young street artists by showing them just how powerful a simple wheat-paste can be.

Hometown: Melbourne, Australia
Years active: 2003 - Present

As a member of Melbourne's Everfresh crew, Meggs has helped shaped Melbourne street art. With the intensity of an action-packed comic, Meggs' superheroes thrash across a wall. His work is an explosive combination of graphic design and abstraction. It is difficult to pick just one member of Everfresh for this list, but Meggs deserves special mention for his success outside of Australia. His international recognition has helped to raise awareness on the global scale for the thriving Melbourne street art scene.

Hometown: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Years active: Mid-1990s - Present

It seems like Jaz has taken the world by storm these last couple of years, popping up on the rosters of a handful of street art festivals worldwide, but his work has been a staple on the streets of Argentina long before the rest of the world became familiar with it. What makes Jaz's work interesting and influential is his willingness to experiment by using materials like tar in his murals or gasoline on walls to water-down the paint and his give murals a watercolor-like look. Jaz's style has evolved over the past few years from a playful twist on Mexican "Lucha Libre" masked wresters to more realized compositions with a heavy focus on symmetry.

Hometown: New York
Years active: 2007 - Present

Gaia was a popular street artist when he was only in high school, citing Swoon as a major influence. By the time he had graduated from MICA, he began organizing Open Walls Baltimore, Baltimore's first street art festival, which gave the city over a dozen new murals by an international roster of street artists. Gaia has spent the last several years traveling all over the world to paint. Although he is still a young artist, aspects of Gaia's style have shown up in many works by his peers—such as his frequent use of hands as a focal point. His willingness to do research and learn about where he is painting and channel that into his murals is what has really made him an important presence within street art. Many street artists could paint a mural in any city without breaking from their signature style, but Gaia has been pushing artists to engage further wherever they paint.

Hometown: Valparaiso, Chile
Years active: 1997 - Present

Although he wasn't there at the very start, INTI should already be on this list as someone who really helped to develop the Chilean street art scene. Additionally, he is starting to become influential on an international level, and it seems likely that his reputation will only grow as he gets more opportunities to paint across the globe. Already, his name is on the lips of so many of the artists as someone who they are looking to as an influence. A lot of street artists, particularly South Americans, claim they are in a transition between being street artists and "contemporary muralists," and INTI seems to be at the forefront of this trend, creating epic murals that push his contemporaries to work even harder.

Hometown: Darius: Richmond, Va. / Downey: Louisville, Ky.
Years active: Darius: 1995 - Present / Downey: 1999 - Present

Darius (aka Leon Reid IV) and Downey (aka Brad Downey) were a New York-based duo known for manipulating objects in public space and turning them into sculptures or works of art. They met at the Pratt Institute, where many of the street artists who rose to prominence in the early 2000s also went to school. Darius and Downey have proven influential through their placement, sculptures, and drive to make people stop and look at something twice. A compilation of their collaborative works can be found in the book The Adventures of Darius and Downey. The duo has since split, but they still both make works for public spaces in a similar vein to their collaborative work. Downey has become one of the leaders in the movement towards highly conceptual street art, and Reid has paved the way for street artists to do legal interventions with community and government support.

Hometown: Stockton, Calif.
Years active: Late 1990s / Early 2000s - Present

Neck Face is anti. He can paint beautifully, but much of his imagery is disturbing and much of his street art and graffiti could be mistaken for something done by a crazy person with no talent. If you think guys like Jim Joe, You Go Girl, and Lush are doing something interesting, Neck Face predates them all. His work is raw, exciting, and in your face. Neck Face was rejecting clean lines and perfect blends from fancy spray-paint before the technology even existed. Now it's a trend, but first there was Neck Face.

Hometown: Elche, Spain
Years active: 1990s - Present

Sam3 is a master of good placement. Typically using nothing more than black paint, Sam3's conceptually driven works are massive in scale. He adds interest to his pieces by playing with the negative space on the buildings he paints. Street artists today who paint simple black silhouettes are almost inevitably compared to Sam3, but those who play with space are equally indebted to him.

Hometown: Baltimore
Years active: 1996 - Present

While Logan Hicks was getting up in the 1990s, it's really in 2001 that he began on the route to leaving a lasting mark on the stencil art community. Logan began like most stencil artists, with 1-layer stencils. Soon though, he was cutting more and more complicated stencils with more and more layers, eventually achieving near-photorealism through layered stencils. Artists like E.L.K, Boxi, and Evol, who all use many-layered stencils in their own ways, all have Hicks to thank for pushing stenciling to another level.

Hometown: Chicago
Years active: 1979 - Present

Dan Witz has been peppering streets with his artwork for over 30 years. Early on, Witz would carefully paint realistic and life-sized hummingbirds around New York City. Now, Witz is still installing photorealistic artworks on the street in the form of pieces that look like vents or grates with people behind them, creating the illusion of a prison. He's also done a lot of "pranks" where site-specific placement is essential, such as placing stuffed gloves so that they just barely stick out of sewers or over fences. Most people may miss a lot of Witz's work, but when it does catch your eye, it's a shock. Witz is a master of placement, realism, and mischief, all essential qualities for the best street artists.

Hometown: London, U.K.
Years active: 1987 - Present

Ben Eine paints letters. Lots and lots of letters. He is known in particular for painting shop shutters in London's Shoreditch neighborhood, London's street art hub, and helping to spark the mentality of shop owners in the area who encourage street artists to paint their property. Eine found commercial success while being represented by Banksy's Pictures On Walls print company, and his popularity peaked when David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, gave President Barack Obama a painting by Eine entitled Twenty First Century City. 95% of what Eine does is just paint letters and individual works, but he's still an iconic and inspirational figure in street art. He took lettering from graffiti and made it something that could fit into the genre of street art.

Hometown: San Francisco
Years active: 1977 - 2010

Billboard Liberation Front began taking over billboards around the same time as Ron English. Eventually, the shadowy BLF and English would collaborate on a number of projects, but they remain independent. The BLF are the forefathers to the Poster Boy movement and similar acts of ad modification.

Hometown: Kensington, Md.
Years active: 1990s - 2001

Margaret Kilgallen only lived to age 33, but she left a legacy as one of the most influential of the Mission School artists and set the stage for a softer side to street art, a street art that crossed over into folk art and depictions of everyday people. Many street artists say they are trying to reach a similar aesthetic through their own work.

Hometown: Paris
Years active: 1952 - 1972

The founder of Letterist International and eventually Situationist International, Guy Debord was one of the members who went out on the streets of Paris during May 1968 riots to write revolutionary poetry on the walls. Letterist International and Situationist ideas, particularly Situationist International's founding text written by Debord in 1957, have informed and inspired many street artists. Debord and his cohorts used "détournement" in much of their work, the practice of re-appropriating content to subvert it (think a McDonald's billboard modified by Ron English or Shepard Fairey's use of political propaganda). And while today artists try to intervene in public space, that practice can be traced back to the actions of the Situationists and Debord's idea of creating "situations."

Hometown: Paris
Years active: 1998 - Present

Since beginning, his invasions of tile-mosaic pieces 15 years ago, Invader has been on a non-stop campaign of getting up. The obvious influence Invader has had has been on the countless imitators who have put up similar mosaics. What is less obvious is how he has inspired artists to consider placement when they are installing street art. Invader has a knack for finding interesting places to put his work, and artists have learned from him that that kind of careful placement can make or break a piece. He tends to go either very high, so that his tiles are above all the other street art and graffiti as well as highly visible and long-lasting, or very low, so that it's a surprise when you find a little Invader at your feet.

Hometown: Paris
Years active: 2000 - Present

In the last two years, JR has become a household name as the winner of the 2011 TED Prize, but he has gained notoriety in the art world over the last decade for his large scale wheat-pastes. JR's photography captures the beauty in everyday people around the world. He's based previous projects in turbulent areas, including the projects of Paris, the wall between Israel and Palestine, favelas in Brazil, and the slums of Kenya. Through this work, JR has highlighted political issues, empowered women and the elderly people, and drawn attention to impoverished areas through beatification. Initially he was putting up these portraits illegally, but cities readily began commissioning him. In a way, JR's photography has been more influential as advocacy campaigns than as street art. After winning the TED Prize, JR has made it possible for cities across the world to carry out his "Inside Out" project with or without him.

Hometown: New York
Years active: 1985 - Present

The Guerrilla Girls have been influential across the art world, pointing out the sexism still very prevalent in the arts. In 1989, one of their posters posed the question: "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?" and pointed out the gross disparity between number of female artists in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection compared to the number of nude women on display in the artworks. While not often directly associated with the street art movement, this anonymous collective has often taken to the streets to make their point.

Hometown: London, U.K.
Years active: 2001 - Present

Coming from a background in graphic design, D*face took over London with his trademark characters like a British version of Shepard Fairey. D*face has spawned many imitators, but few can reach his abilities to slickly appropriate pop art and advertising imagery. His work subverts mass produced images without alienating the people who consume the things he is appropriating. D*face has also helped to shape the commercial street art scene, particularly in the UK, as the owner of Stolenspace Gallery.

Hometown: Toulouse, France
Years active: 1991 - Present

Though Miss Van does not put much work on the street these days, her influence as an artist persists. The subject of her work has always been women and femininity, and for this reason she was frequently the token female in every burgeoning graffiti and street art publication. Her sultry characters were met with some backlash from the feminist community and have inadvertently contributed to a stereotype that female street artists tend to only do images of over-sexualized women. Over the years, her characters have matured, evolving into something darker yet still alluring. In various interviews, Miss Van has said that this transformation reflects her personal growth.

Hometown: Gallipolis, Ohio
Years active: 1983 - Present

Jenny Holzer is one of most influential female artists of the last century. The only reason she doesn't rank higher on this list is that most people don't know her for her street art. But Holzer started out her art career with stickers and shocking "Inflammatory Essays" wheat-pasted around New York. Only later did she move onto the large indoor installations and outdoor projection pieces she is known for. This fall, she is taking her LED signs one step further by using Chinese characters and exhibiting them in Hong Kong. As a street artist, Holzer is an early example of using art in unexpected places to shock people out of their day-to-day lives.

Hometown: Bologna, Italy
Years active: 1999 - Present

Whether it's for his stop motion street art animations or for his thought-provoking and sometimes controversial content, Blu's work turns heads. Blu started doing large-scale works with house paint and rollers mounted on telescopic sticks. Typically, he uses few colors and has a heavy focus on the work's underlying meaning. Blu's walls have an element of artistic activism, frequently commenting on war and capitalism. As a testament to this, Blu's participation within formal art settings has been limited. He has painted places with symbolic importance, such as a watchtower in the West Bank as a part of Banksy's "Santa's Ghetto" project. Some artists have borrowed from him stylistically, but even more cite him as an inspiration for bringing together activism and art so well.

Hometown: Dallas
Years active: Late 1970s - Present

Ron English is considered a pioneer of the street art movement. In the early '80s, before "street art" and "ad takeover" were even accepted terms, he was illegally pasting his satirical works over advertisements on billboards. His work targeted major corporations like McDonalds, Camel cigarettes, and Disney, and it re-appropriates corporate icons to subvert their influence on society. Along with ad takeovers, he has also made vinyl toys, one of which, an obese Ronald McDonald, was featured in Morgan Spurlock's film Super Size Me. English has done album art for some of the most celebrated musicians and was featured on The Simpsons. He has influenced street art through demonstrating the liberation of public ad space, but he has also inspired a generation to re-contextualize corporate figures and their presence in our everyday lives.

Hometown: Philadelphia
Years active: 1984 - Present

Stephen Powers (aka ESPO) may consider himself a graffiti writer and a sign painter, but with a slightly different background. Powers has always been a trailblazer, from the graffiti on security gates that he painted in the middle of the day to the "Street Market" installation at the Venice to his "Love Letter" murals, Powers is always two steps ahead of everybody else. He has a way with words and an attitude that has inspired a generation of street artists to play with words and letters and make a genuine effort to connect with locals wherever they paint.

Hometown: Arizona and New York
Years active: Faile: 1999 - Present / Bast: 2000 - Present

Faile and Bast developed what is now one of the most-imitated aesthetics in street art: the gritty New York/pulp fiction/pop art mash-up. Bast and Faile, but Faile in particular, were also some of the artists who trail blazed the now well-worn path of street artists using print releases to provide a steady paycheck and take art from a hobby to a full-time job, allowing the work to develop more fully.

Hometown: New York
Years active: 1968 - Present

John Fekner is one of the most influential and yet under recognized stencil artists. He created hundreds of outdoor works, usually consisting of stenciled dates and phrases. Beginning his career in the streets in the late '60s, his early work predates even the initial popularization of graffiti. Aside from being one of the first, Fekner's street art works are profound. New York in the '70s and '80s was a rough and unforgiving scene of urban decay. Fekner drew attention to these crumbling structures, adorning them with large words like "Last Hope," "Visual Pollution," and "Industrial Fossil." With a poetic eye, he re-contextualized these visual landscapes for the passerby, assigning meaning and value to what were otherwise eyesores.

Hometown: San Francisco
Years active: 1984 - Present

A central figure of San Francisco's Mission School as well as Alleged Gallery's Beautiful Losers (two groups of which there was significant overlap), Barry McGee has been influential in street art, graffiti, and mainstream contemporary art since his emergence in the 1990s. He met Os Gemeos in Brazil early in their career, forging a valuable link between Brazilian and American graffiti. Indoors, he has had more success than probably any graffiti writer since Basquiat. McGee's paintings, drawings, prints, videos, and conceptual installations draw from graffiti but also go far beyond it. McGee, Stephen Powers, and Todd James even had their collaborative "Street Market" installation travel to the 2001 Venice Biennale after it was shown at Deitch Projects in New York. A graffiti writer who would resist the street artist label, we have included him because his work on the street has has inspired countless street artists.

Hometown: Jersey City
Years active: Early 1990s - Present

Although these days KAWS is trying to distance himself from his past history of street art and graffiti, the way he inserted his work into bus stop advertisements and billboards was groundbreaking at the time. Since then, KAWS has gone on to conquer the vinyl toy world—where many street artists and graffiti writers followed him—the fashion world, and the fine art world. His artwork has been included in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and earlier this year he designed the stage and Moonman award for the MTV VMAs, getting his art and his name in front of a massive audience. People tend to either love or hate KAWS, but there's little doubt that the way he has been able to infiltrate pop culture has been an inspiration to many.

Hometown: Newark, New Jersey
Years active: 1982 - Present

Barbara Kruger is another example of an artist who is extremely influential throughout the art world but whose early street art has been mostly forgotten. In a classic example of détournement, Kruger's utilizes the imagery and style of advertising to comment on issues such as sexism and our culture of consumption. Within street art and street culture, she has been a major influence on Shepard Fairey, and the Supreme logo very clearly references her work. Back in May when Supreme was in a legal battle with Married to the Mob for appropriating Supreme's logo, Kruger finally commenting on the situation and Supreme's appropriation of art by calling Supreme "a ridiculous clusterfuck of uncool jokers."

Hometown: Daytona Beach, Fla.
Years active: 1999 - Present

Swoon is one of the most influential wheat-pasters in street art. Her life size wood block printed portraits have influenced a slew of other prominent street artists including Gaia, Imminent Disaster, and Elbowtoe. Not only are these detailed posters visually stunning, but what makes her work particularly special is that she plays off the ephemerality of the medium. As her delicate paper cuts whither and decay, they take on new beauty.

Hometown: New York
Years active: As a duo: 1993 - 1995 / Separately: 1980s - Present

COST and REVS are two of New York's most prolific graffiti writers. In the early '90s, the duo was ubiquitous with stickers, rollers, murals, and posters. COST and REVS took their work a step further than most graffiti and street artists at that time by engaging with the public through providing a phone number on their work. The number led to an answering machine where they would rant on the recording, and people could respond. Though COST was arrested and his identity has since been revealed, REVS stayed anonymous. COST continues to poster and tag New York to this day, and REVS has produced some welded sculptures. The two are landmarks in graffiti and street art history for their visual domination of the city of New York, directly influencing artists like Shepard Fairey and just about everyone else who was getting up in New York City in the 1990s.

Hometown: Paris
Years active: 1981 - Present

Blek le Rat put up stencils of a black rat on the streets of Paris in 1981. At the time, he was the only artist in Paris using stencils on the street. A few years later, there were literally hundreds—talk about influence. The Parisian stencil scene still lives on to this day. Of course, Blek still does work outdoors from time to time, like when he painted his most recent mural in Bushwick, but younger French artists like C215 can also trace their roots back to Blek le Rat.

Hometown: São Paulo, Brazil
Years active: 1987 - Present

Os Gemeos are undisputed pioneers and leaders of the Brazilian graffiti community with a very strong influence on South American street art as well. These identical twin brothers took the limited information they had about New York-style graffiti and made it uniquely Brazilian. Their employment of traditional graffiti characters, the way they utilize space, and their combination of North American and South American influences served as a jumping off point for street artists all over South America. We have yet to meet a South American street artist who does not point to Os Gemeos as a major influence and inspiration.

Hometown: New York
Years active: 1976 - 1988

Before Basquiat was one of the most popular artists in New York City, hanging out with the likes of Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, he was a young, homeless runaway who took up graffiti under the name "SAMO." In his short life, Basquiat worked his way up the rungs of the art world, landing himself in top galleries yet continuing to put work on the street. His street art informed his canvas work and vice versa. His work helped define a generation of art. Stylistically, he is often imitated by artists from all over contemporary art but rarely matched.

Hometown: Charleston, S.C.
Years active: 1989 - Present

Depending on whom you talk to, Shepard Fairey is often considered either the greatest or the worst street artist ever. Either way, he's been influential. He's spawned countless imitators, and his work has been parodied to no end. He has turned more people on to illegal street art than just about anybody, and he has been more prolific than all but a handful street artists or graffiti writers. His work has influenced people aesthetically as well as conceptually. Obey the Giant or not, you can't escape his influence.

Hometown: Kutztown, P.A.
Years active: 1981 - 1990

Though Keith Haring only lived to be 32, his work has influenced not just street art, but the art world at large. Haring's bold cartoon figures are a visual staple of the 1980s New York art scene and have come to appear on everything from T-shirts to skateboards. His rise to stardom all began with drawing on the empty billboards in New York City subway stations. Haring's Pop Shop, where he to put his signature designs on just about anything he could mass produce, was a precursor to brands like Shepard Fairey's OBEY Giant and KAWS' OriginalFake.

Hometown: Bristol, U.K.
Years active: 1990 - Present

Banksy came into street art much later than many of the artists on this list, switching from admittedly atypical graffiti to stenciling around 2000, so he was already standing on the shoulders of giants. At the same time, his reach has been so great that we had to put him at number one on this list. Name another street artist who has been nominated for an Oscar. It's easy to find examples of Banksy's very direct influence on artists, but he has also had a massive but less visible influence on the street art genre in general. Almost every street artist who has started their career in the last five years owes a lot to Banksy, and the entire street art community owes Banksy for bringing awareness of street art to a mass public. If you've been following his New York residency, you know that Banksy is capable of starting a social media and street wide frenzy.