Obey Biography
Obey (1970 - ) Shepard Fairey, also known as Obey, was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1970. From the age of 14 he entered the realm of graphic design creating artwork for skateboards and t-shirts. Influenced by the work of Andy Warhol and the Russian artist Alexandre Rodchenko, he naturally devoted himself to artistic studies.
Shepard Fairey enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design at the age of 18 and created, together with some classmates, the sticker campaign André the Giant Has a Posse, literally "André the Giant has a group of friends". These stickers with the image of the French wrestler André Roussimoff, in the form of paper, vinyl, silk-screen or photocopy posters, are plastered on the walls of their city, Providence, before spreading throughout the United States and tens of thousands of places around the world. This street art campaign turns into OBEY, "obeyed" and seeks to parody Americanist propaganda. Decidedly anti-Bush, Shepard Fairey gained recognition with a new street art campaign called "Be the Revolution" in 2004. However, 20 years after his André the Giant/Obey, he became a propagandist himself, but this time in favor of Barack Obama. He produced the campaign poster for the future President of the United States, called "Hope", later declined to "Vote" or "Change".
Founder of several graphic design companies since 1992, Shepard Fairey puts his artistic talent to the benefit of large companies to create marketing and viral operations or product illustrations. He thus specialized in "guerrilla marketing" with clients such as Pepsi, Hasbro, also designing the covers of the video games "New Super Mario Bros 2" and albums by Black Eyed Peas, Smashing Pumpkins and Led Zeppelin.
