Shepard Fairey

SHEPARD FAIREY (Charleston, South Carolina, 1970).
"OBEY ICON," 2026.
Color offset lithograph on paper.
Open edition.
Signed and dated in pencil.
Measurements: 91.5 x 61 cm.

OBEY ICON revisits one of the fundamental images of Fairey’s visual language, derived from the OBEY GIANT campaign launched in the late 1980s. The face, reduced to large black and white masses and accompanied by the bold red “OBEY” banner, encapsulates his interest in the aesthetics of propaganda, repetition, and the mass circulation of images.

Shepard Fairey studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and in 1989 launched “Andre the Giant Has a Posse,” the origin of the subsequent OBEY GIANT campaign. His career has spanned urban art, graphic design, printmaking, and large-scale public murals; among his best-known images is “HOPE” (2008), the original of which is part of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. His work is also represented in collections such as the MoMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.