Banksy’s Venice mural awash with controversy

A Banksy mural in Venice which is disappearing due to saltwater erosion has triggered a row between a minister seeking to save it and artists who say it should be allowed to fade.

The work by British street artist Banksy that has Italians at odds. Picture: AFP

A Banksy mural in Venice which is disappearing due to saltwater erosion has triggered a row between an Italian minister seeking to save it and graffiti artists who say it should be allowed to fade.

The artist, from Bristol, England, painted a migrant girl in a lifejacket with a flare in her hand in 2019 at the water line of a palazzo in the Dorsoduro district. It has since become a tourist attraction but after years of being buffeted by the wake of passing motorboats its colours are fading.

Vittorio Sgarbi, Italy’s Junior Arts Minister, said he had recruited a bank to fund the restoration and protection of the work. “I am not interested in whether the artist offers his consent. The mural was created illegally … [but] it’s my job to protect it.”

But graffiti artists opposed the plan. “You save an artwork if the artist is dead or if it’s his most important work,” Cristiano Bovo told La Repubblica. “Banksy has used colour for 30 years. He knows how long they last, and I don’t think he would be so presumptuous to believe his work lasts for ever.”

Other Banksy works have faded or been scrubbed off the walls they were painted on, including his 2007 One Nation Under CCTV in London, which was painted over in 2009. Westminster City Council claimed that Banksy had “no more right to paint graffiti than a child”.

Art buyers around the world disagree, paying millions of dollars for his works.

The Times