Mr Brainwash — the alias of French-born, Los Angeles-based artist Thierry Guetta — has spent the better part of two decades collaging the imagery of twentieth-century pop culture into street-rooted, optimistic compositions. He found a global audience almost by accident: Banksy's 2010 documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, which set out to chronicle the street art scene through Guetta's own obsessive camera work, ended up turning its subject into one of pop art's most recognisable living names. Today, from his Los Angeles studio and gallery, Mr Brainwash continues to work across screenprint, spray paint, and mixed media, his work held by collectors across the world.
His new campaign, Never Give Up On Tomorrow, launched today and runs to a hard deadline. It centres on two new works built around a single idea: optimism rendered as colour. Hope is Beautiful shows a young girl, set against the artist's familiar black-and-white graffiti-wall backdrop, releasing a heart-shaped cluster of balloons skyward. Its companion, Peace is Beautiful, swaps the balloons for a flock of butterflies, released by a young boy against the same backdrop. Hung side by side, the two pieces are designed to read as a single rainbow — a visual rhyme that runs through both the silkscreen editions and the more heavily worked mixed media originals.
What's actually being released
There are two distinct tiers to this release, and the difference between them is worth understanding before buying either.
Silkscreen editions on paper present the cleaner, more graphic version of each image — the balloon-girl and butterfly-boy set against Mr Brainwash's signature monochrome wall, framed at 25 × 25in. These are priced at £2,750 individually, or £3,950 for the pair. Buyers purchasing the pair are allocated matching edition numbers where the production run allows, though specific numbers can't be guaranteed in advance.
Original mixed media works on paper take the same compositions and build on them by hand: collaged text, additional spray work, and painted mark-making layered directly over the printed base, each one unique. These are priced at £12,950 individually, or £19,950 for the pair, sized at 21 × 21in. Originals from a release like this typically sell through during the campaign window — any that remain once the timed release closes will be repriced to £13,950 each.
A small number of larger mixed media originals on canvas are also available by enquiry only, in 16 × 16in and 22 × 22in formats — contact the gallery directly for these.
The deadline that actually matters
This is a timed release in the literal sense, not a marketing device: orders close at midnight on Sunday 5 July 2026. After that point, the edition sizes for both silkscreens are permanently fixed, and no further examples of either work will ever be produced. There's no second print run, no reissue, no "while stocks last" — once the window closes, what's been ordered is the entire edition that will ever exist.
That mechanic is fairly standard for a Mr Brainwash timed release, and it's part of why his work has built such a consistent secondary market: collectors know precisely how scarce a given edition will be, because the artist and publisher commit to the number before the window closes rather than after.
Hope is Beautiful and Banksy's Girl with Balloon
It's worth addressing directly rather than leaving unsaid: a girl releasing a balloon against a stencilled wall inevitably calls Banksy's Girl with Balloon to mind — arguably the single most recognisable image in street art since it first appeared near London's Waterloo Bridge in 2002, and a work we wrote about at length in our 24th-anniversary piece on the original.
The connection isn't incidental. Mr Brainwash's career was launched by a Banksy-directed documentary, and his work has always sat in open dialogue with Banksy's visual language rather than at a distance from it — the two artists share a vocabulary of stencilled walls, children, and small gestures of hope, even where their intentions diverge. Where Banksy's girl loses her balloon to the wind, an image read for two decades as wistful and elegiac, Mr Brainwash's girl in Hope is Beautiful is doing something more deliberate: she's not losing the balloons, she's letting a whole heart-shaped cluster of them go on purpose. It's the same gesture read in the opposite emotional register — release as celebration rather than release as loss.
"Collectors have been quick to spot the connection to Banksy's work, but what's interesting is how differently the two pieces read once you put them side by side."
Zaid | Senior Art Advisor & Curator
Why this pairing works
Mr Brainwash's strongest work has always traded on contrast — the cool detachment of a stencilled, sprayed wall set against something unguarded and bright moving across it. A child letting go of balloons, a child releasing butterflies: both gestures are small, both are acts of release, and both sit somewhere between innocence and intention. Read together, Hope is Beautiful and Peace is Beautiful don't just match in palette; they complete each other, each work needing its pair to fully make the case the artist is making.
Frequently asked questions
What's the actual deadline for this release? Midnight on Sunday 5 July 2026. Orders placed after that point cannot be fulfilled as part of this edition.
What's the real difference between the silkscreen edition and the original? The silkscreen is a clean, graphic print of the composition. The original takes that same printed base and adds hand-applied paint, collage, and spray work on top, making each one unique rather than part of a numbered run.
If I buy the pair, will I get matching edition numbers? The publisher allocates matching numbers to pair purchases where the production run allows it, but this can't be guaranteed in advance for every order.
What happens to unsold originals after 5 July? Any mixed media originals still available once the timed release closes will be repriced to £13,950 each, up from £12,950.
Can I buy the larger canvas originals online? Not directly — the 16 × 16in and 22 × 22in mixed media canvas originals are available by enquiry only. Contact the gallery to discuss availability and pricing.
Hope is Beautiful and Peace is Beautiful are available now through Creed Gallery, Ascot, for collectors across Berkshire, Surrey, and London, until midnight on Sunday 5 July 2026. View the silkscreen editions | View the mixed media originals | Read our Banksy Girl with Balloon 24th-anniversary piece