The Man Behind The Brush
Under the name Mr Brainwash, Thierry Guetta, who has helped catapult street art into the mainstream, sees magic everywhere. Photographed at luxury rental 2Fifteen, the acclaimed artist embraced the city last year with his solo exhibition titled Toronto Is Beautiful.
By Elia Essen | Portrait Photography by Natasha Gerschon | Gallery Photography by Taglialatella Galleries | Grooming by Kristin Innocent
Picture a street artist, and what comes to mind may well be some version of a troubled teenager spray-painting looping letters in an underpass beneath the cover of darkness. With a greying beard, a strong French accent, and the mantra “Life Is Beautiful,” Thierry Guetta is most certainly not that.
The 59-year-old street artist, who goes by the moniker Mr Brainwash, lives boldly and brightly, creating colourful and playful work around the globe. “If you don't believe in magic, you will never find it,” he tells me. Guetta has been at the forefront of the contemporary art world for decades, helping to catapult street art into the mainstream alongside such legends as Banksy and Space Invader, with his signature flamboyant Pop Art-inspired style.
In other words, he’s a big deal. And while it’s tempting to summarize him in a list of accomplishments (such as his star-studded clients: the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rick Ross, Michael Jackson and Madonna) or his global collaborations (Mercedes-Benz, Coca Cola, Ray-Ban and Stan Lee), it misses something crucial about Guetta: his why. Everything he does—from a phone interview from his Los Angeles home to creating life-sized statues of LeBron James and Bugs Bunny to promote Space Jam: A New Legacy—is to further his goal of spreading love and sharing his message that life is beautiful.
Guetta’s positive outlook and meteoric rise to fame started from humble beginnings. He grew up as the youngest of five in Garges-lès-Gonesse, a poor suburb outside of Paris, and his family’s limited resources were balanced with the wealth of a loving home life.
“I think street art, it’s always been there, you know? It started a long, long, long time ago, with the cavemen,” he says. “Today, it's everywhere. Everyone expresses themselves on the streets, but it becomes a connection with people's lives. It's down your street, and you pass every day, so you grow up with it.”
Guetta learned voraciously through the lens of his camera from his subjects. At Banksy’s urging, in 2008, he opened his debut exhibit, a colourful and visionary blend of the street art he’d so carefully studied and pop cultural moments, both past and present, with Guetta’s view of positivity at its heart. The title of the exhibition, Life Is Beautiful, continues to be a mantra for the artist.
Meanwhile, with promises to countless street artists to create a movie to tell their stories, more than 30,000 hours of footage, and no idea how to actually deliver a cohesive film, Guetta was in a tight spot. Luckily, Banksy stepped in to direct the movie, focusing the film on the newly dubbed Mr Brainwash and his ascension into the art world. The documentary, released in 2010 and titled Exit Through The Gift Shop, went on to receive widespread critical acclaim, including an Oscar nomination, and launched Guetta—and street art in general—onto the global stage. “Exit Through The Gift Shop really opened people's minds that street art is important because the young people of this generation, that's what they grew up with,” Guetta reflects. “It's a wave of a moment of time.”
Over the past two and a half decades, he has continued to create with a superhuman fervour. The artist has shows, collaborations, and installations across the globe under his belt, from the world’s largest Rubik’s Cube mosaic (complete with the Guinness World Record certification to prove it) in the Dominican Republic to a colourful large-scale mural in the new Battersea Power Station underground in London.
Danny Soberano, Jennifer Lipkowitz, Thierry Guetta aka Mr Brainwash, Bryan Levy and Patrick Guetta
Last year, Guetta presented a new solo show, titled Toronto Is Beautiful, at Taglialatella Galleries on Yorkville Avenue, taking over the exhibition space for two and a half weeks with a collection of vibrant sculptures, silk screen prints, and mixed media pieces. Many of the pieces are still on view (including a silk screen print on paper sharing the show’s name, depicting the Toronto skyline) and available for purchase through the gallery.
On his trip to Toronto, Guetta stopped by the sleek luxury Forest Hill rental, 2Fifteen, by DBS Developments, where he was photographed for Living Luxe Magazine. With elegant suites created by Wise Nadel Design and sweeping views of the city, the thoughtfully appointed building, painstakingly imagined by developer Bryan Levy, is a further testament to Guetta’s message at the Taglialatella exhibition: Toronto is beautiful.
Closer to home, Guetta’s show Cars Are Beautiful, on view at Los Angeles’ Petersen Automotive Museum until 2026, immerses visitors in a vibrant world of automotive creativity, where they can explore pieces like Childhood Dream (a Van Gogh-inspired children’s bedroom complete with a racecar bed), Furry Fiat (a Fiat 500 covered in fuzzy pink fur), and Big Little Car (a 10-foot version of the classic Little Tikes toy car).
“I think street art, it's always been there, you know? It started a long, long, long time ago with the cavemen. Today, it's everywhere.”
The pace of Guetta’s life and work is almost frenetic, but he seems to draw from a limitless supply of energy. “A lot of people said life is too short, and I said, ‘Wrong; life is 365 lives a year,” he says. “I'm 60 times 365 lives. I did a lot already. So when you see it that way, life is not short.”
Throughout the years, his guiding message has stayed the same: Life is beautiful. “It’s a way of life. I decide to see the beauty of life, to give the love of life, to give messages: Follow your dream; Love is the answer; Never give up; Keep smiling; Keep it real,” Guetta says. “All of these words that just make you feel better, make you feel that everyone is a diamond, and you just have to learn how to polish it to make it shine.” While he recalls early critics labelled his work as “cheesy,” Guetta says he believed in it too strongly to be deterred, and today he notes that his message of positivity is everywhere.
Lately, Guetta’s attention has been focused on a new venture: Mr Brainwash Art Museum in Beverly Hills. Opened in late 2022 as a pop-up in the Paley Center of Media building, the museum allows visitors to immerse themselves in the wonderful and vibrant mind of Mr Brainwash. “People said, ‘Oh, you'll be in a museum, but you need to be dead to be in a museum,’ ” Guetta recalls. “And I said to myself, ‘You know what I'm going to open? I'm going to be the first artist in the world to open his own museum alive.’ And I did it.”
“I'm a person who is fully living life. I want every minute, every breath of it. I don't even sleep at night.”
The museum, which offers free school visits, is part of Guetta’s lifelong mission to give back to the world in which he sees so much beauty. He has contributed to dozens of organizations and causes, from the Los Angeles LGBT Center to the Prince’s Trust to creating murals to honour 9/11 victims, and has worked alongside the Pope and Michelle Obama to support their charities.
“I keep going, you know, I keep going and going and going and going and because of the way I'm doing things, I can help so many associations to try to share what I do and raise money,” he says. “It makes me wake up in the morning and continue because I feel like I'm not just creating for myself, but I'm making a better world.”
Chatting with Guetta feels almost like a spiritual experience. He speaks with quiet fervour, espousing advice on how to appreciate each day to the fullest. He seems fully and completely unflappable—like someone who is so at peace with himself and the world that he transcends normal problems like having a bad day or getting grumpy. Maybe it’s this inner peace that allows him to approach his work with such unabashed whimsy and playfulness, creating moments of vibrant colour and undiluted joy so that the rest of us can see the world through his adoring eyes, however briefly.
“I am a person who is fully living life. I want every minute, every breath of it. I don't even sleep at night. I'm a guy who sleeps two hours, three hours maximum, a day, because when my body is dead tired, I lie down; my body says, ‘Okay, now you’re tired. No, we're going to play with your head,’ ” he says. “Even when I dream, when I don't even remember, I'm sure that I'm continuing; I never stop. I feel like my life never stops, and it will never stop. And even after my death, I think that I’ve prepared so much in advance that I never share with people that it will go on for many, many decades after.”