Barry McGee

BARRY McGEE was born in 1966 in San Francisco, where he still lives and works.
McGee began his career as a graffiti artist, operating under the name “Twist,” and quickly became known for his stylized images of vagrants, liquor bottles and vines painted on walls and subway cars.
In 1991, he earned a bachelor’s degree in painting and printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute, thus beginning to combine street art with more traditional gallery art. He was a leading member of the Mission School, an art movement that emerged in San Francisco’s Mission district in the late 1990s, characterized by a handmade aesthetic and a DIY (do-it-yourself) attitude, as opposed to the gentrification of the area due to the dot-com explosion.
His installations often include found objects such as empty liquor bottles, spray cans, and pieces of scrap metal, creating visually stimulating, multilayered compositions that address themes of identity, consumer culture, and commerce.
Throughout his career, McGee has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial. His work has been exhibited in major museums and galleries such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the UC Berkeley Art Museum, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Fondazione Prada in Venice.
Despite his success in formal institutions, McGee continues to value direct contact with the public through graffiti, seeing it as a vital mode of communication that defies the conventions of the traditional art world.