12 Iconic Graffiti Murals That Transformed Vandalism into Acclaimed Art

Key facts

• Os Gemeos created The Giant of Boston in 2012 for an Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston exhibition, painting the 70-foot mural by hand over nine days.
• Eduardo Kobra's Etnias, made for the 2016 Rio Olympics, covers nearly 30,000 square feet and broke the Guinness World Record for largest graffiti art.
• Shepard Fairey's The Purple Shall Govern, standing ten stories high in Johannesburg, commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Purple Rain Protest.
• King Robbo's Robbo Incorporated, created in 1985 along London's Regent's Canal, became the city's oldest surviving graffiti and sparked a feud with Banksy.
• David Choe's 2005 Facebook Murals at the Palo Alto headquarters were later cut from the walls and moved to the Menlo Park campus.
• Keith Haring's Tuttomondo, his last public work before his 1990 death, remains Europe's largest mural at about 180 square meters in Pisa.
• Dmitri Vrubel's My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love, painted on the Berlin Wall in 1990, was repainted in 2009.
• Banksy's Balloon Girl was removed from an East London shop in 2014 and sold for £500,000; in 2017 a poll named it the UK's favorite artwork.