Shepard Fairey × Sandra Chevrier — The Beauty of Liberty and Equality (2020)
On July 4, 2020, two artists who work in completely different visual languages released a single print together.
One builds propaganda. The other builds cages.
The result — The Beauty of Liberty and Equality — is one of the most recognized Shepard Fairey collaborations of the last decade, and one of the few prints from that year that collectors still actively chase. This is the full story of the work: what it depicts, why it matters, how it entered the market, and what to look for when you buy one.
View this piece in the Gauntlet Gallery collection →
What you are actually looking at
At first glance it reads as a Shepard Fairey. The symmetry is there. The cream-and-red palette is there. The Art-Deco framing, the floral geometry, the poster-grade balance — all unmistakably OBEY.
Then you notice the face.
The central portrait is not Fairey's. It belongs to Sandra Chevrier, the Montreal painter whose ongoing Cages series layers fragments of vintage comic-book pages over female faces. The comic panels don't decorate the portrait. They obscure it — partially masking the woman behind torn strips of superhero iconography. Chevrier's argument, made across hundreds of works, is that idealized femininity is its own kind of cage: a role written by someone else, printed and reprinted until it feels natural.
Put Chevrier's cage inside Fairey's frame and you get something neither artist makes alone. Fairey supplies the language of the political poster — the visual grammar of Liberty and Equality as public virtues. Chevrier supplies the human cost of those virtues when they are promised but not delivered. The woman at the center is both celebrated and constrained, which is precisely the point of a print released to mark a centennial of women's suffrage.
Why 2020, and why this image
The work was created for The Beauty of Liberty and Equality project, tied to the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment — the 1920 constitutional amendment that prohibited denying the vote on the basis of sex. The release date was deliberate: July 4, 2020, American Independence Day, in a year when the meaning of that holiday was under unusually loud public debate.
That timing is part of why the image landed. It is not a generic Fairey pattern with a face dropped in. It is a suffrage poster for a moment when suffrage — who gets a full voice in public life — was again a live question. The collaboration gave the message something a solo Fairey print rarely has: a second, contradicting emotional register. The frame says progress. The face says not yet.
Shepard Fairey, in one paragraph you actually need
If you are new to the artist: Shepard Fairey (b. 1970) is one of the most influential American artists of his generation. He emerged from the 1990s skateboarding and street-art scene with his OBEY Giant campaign — an experiment in propaganda and public space that grew into a global visual language. In 2008 his Barack Obama "Hope" portrait became one of the most recognizable political images in modern history and now hangs in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. His work is held by the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, LACMA, and the Smithsonian. New editions release through his OBEY studio, where limited runs routinely sell out within hours and trade actively on the secondary market.
That last sentence matters for this print specifically. Fairey's editions are designed to be scarce on release and liquid afterward. The Beauty of Liberty and Equality is a textbook example of both.
The OBEY method: how Fairey builds an image
To understand why this print works, it helps to understand how Fairey builds any image. His visual system is borrowed, deliberately, from twentieth-century propaganda — Soviet constructivism, WPA posters, the hard symmetry of political printing. He strips those forms of their original message and reloads them. A star, a sunburst, a bordered portrait, a slab of stylized type: individually they are the furniture of persuasion. Assembled, they make the viewer feel the weight of a message before reading a single word.
That is the engine under The Beauty of Liberty and Equality. The Deco framing and floral geometry are not ornament. They are the poster's way of saying "this is important, this is public, this is a virtue we are supposed to share." Fairey has spent thirty years training viewers to read that grammar instantly. When he hands the center of the composition to another artist, he is lending that trained response to someone else's idea.
Sandra Chevrier, the other signature
Sandra Chevrier (b. 1983) is a Montreal-based painter best known for the Cages series. Her work sits at the intersection of comic-book appropriation and portraiture, and she has built an independent collector base well outside the street-art world Fairey comes from. That independence is a quiet driver of this print's demand: it is cross-collected. A Chevrier collector wants it. A Fairey collector wants it. The two audiences rarely overlap on any other single object at this price.
When both artists hand-sign the same sheet, you are not buying one artist's market. You are buying the intersection of two.
The Cages series, in depth
Chevrier's Cages are worth understanding on their own terms, because they are the reason this print has a second emotional life. In the series, she paints a woman's face with realist care, then covers portions of it with collaged fragments of vintage superhero comics — Superman, Wonder Woman, the four-color heroics of mid-century American print culture. The comics are not chosen for nostalgia. They are the "cage": the impossible, printed ideals — perfect strength, perfect beauty, perfect self-sacrifice — that get laid over real women until the real face is hard to see.
Read that way, the collaboration's title stops being a slogan and becomes a question. Liberty and equality for whom, exactly, and at what cost to the person expected to embody them? Fairey's frame promises the virtues. Chevrier's face shows the person carrying the weight of them. The tension is the artwork. A lesser collaboration would have simply put a Fairey pattern behind a pretty portrait; this one puts two arguments in the same rectangle and lets them disagree.
Collaborations in Fairey's practice
Fairey collaborates more than most artists at his level, and collectors should understand what that means for the market. A Fairey solo edition trades on one name and one body of work. A Fairey collaboration trades on two — which cuts both ways. It widens the buyer pool, because both fan bases are in play. It also narrows supply in a specific sense: a collaboration is usually a one-time event tied to a project or cause, not part of an ongoing series the artist can extend. There is no "volume two."
The strongest Fairey collaborations share a pattern: a genuine creative partner (not a logo swap), a specific occasion, a limited run, and dual signatures. The Beauty of Liberty and Equality has all four. That combination is why it has aged better than a large share of the 2020 print calendar, much of which was released into the same pandemic-era buying surge and has since drifted.
The edition and how it reached the market
This was a hand-pulled screen print — a 10-color job on cream Speckletone paper, finished with the collaboration's signature hand-cut deckled edges. It released as a timed drop, hand-numbered and signed in pencil by both Fairey and Chevrier. It sold out at release and was not reprinted.
A note on edition size, because it matters for due diligence. This specific example is hand-numbered #46, and is offered as part of an edition of 200. You should be aware that the broader Beauty of Liberty and Equality image has also been documented at larger edition sizes elsewhere, and several format variants exist at different dimensions. None of that changes what is in front of you — a dual-signed, hand-numbered screen print — but if edition size is central to your decision, confirm the exact configuration of the specific example against its numbering and dimensions before you buy. That is true of every Fairey collaboration with multiple formats, and it is the single most common source of confusion in this corner of the market.
Authentication: what actually backs a Fairey
Here is the part collectors most often get wrong, so read it carefully.
Shepard Fairey does not issue an artist certificate of authenticity, and there is no third-party authentication board for his work — no Fairey equivalent of Banksy's Pest Control. That is not a gap in this print. It is how the entire Fairey market operates.
Authenticity for a signed Fairey rests on three things: the signature and numbering, the physical characteristics of the edition (paper stock, color count, deckled edges, print process), and provenance. On a collaboration like this one, the presence of both artists' hands is itself part of the authentication picture — a forger has to fake two signatures, not one, on a print whose genuine examples are well documented.
Be skeptical of anyone selling a Fairey with a claim of "third-party authentication" or a certificate implying an official board signed off. No such board exists for his prints. A credible seller documents the signature, the numbering, the format, and the chain of ownership — and does not pretend a paper certificate is something it isn't.
Condition: what to check, and why photographs matter
Condition drives value on paper works more than most first-time buyers expect. For a print like this, the things that move the needle are: the crispness of the deckled edges, any handling creases or corner dings, the brightness of the cream stock, and whether the sheet has ever been trimmed, laid down, or exposed to light.
Because condition is specific to the individual sheet, treat the listing photographs as part of the condition report, not decoration. Zoom into the corners. Look at the margins around the signatures. If you are buying at the higher end of this print's range, ask for additional images of any area the standard photos don't fully show. A reputable gallery will provide them.
What the market says
Now the numbers — restrained, because this is context, not a promise.
Across recent signed-and-numbered comparables for this image, observed sale prices span roughly $250 to $1,240. That wide band is mostly a story about format and signatures: larger 24×36 variants and single-signed copies sit lower, while dual-signed 2020 examples in comparable condition cluster higher, in the region of $975 to $1,240. The median across all formats sits near $650.
A few caveats you should hold onto. These figures are drawn largely from secondary-marketplace records, which means they are directional rather than an appraisal. Value on any specific sale varies with edition, dimensions, condition, the strength of the documentation, and the venue of the transaction. And market data ages — the ranges above reflect data reviewed as of mid-2026.
The honest summary: this is a print with a genuine, liquid secondary market and a recognizable demand profile. It is not a lottery ticket, and no one — including us — can promise where it goes next.
Who this piece is for
Three kinds of collector tend to buy this print, and it's worth knowing which one you are.
The Fairey completist wants it because dual-signed collaborations are a distinct, scarcer lane within an already-collected body of work. The Chevrier collector wants it because it's one of the most accessible ways to own a Cages image with the artist's own signature. And the message-first buyer wants it because it is, plainly, a strong object — a suffrage-centennial statement that reads as well on a wall as it does in a thesis.
If you are none of those three and simply like the image, that is also a completely valid reason to buy it. The best collections usually start there.
How to buy your first collaboration print
If this would be your first serious Fairey purchase, a short discipline saves a lot of regret.
First, buy the specific sheet, not the image. Two examples of the same print at the same edition size are not the same asset if one has bright margins and crisp corners and the other has a soft crease and light-toning. Read the condition notes and the photographs as the real description; the title is just the headline.
Second, confirm the signatures and numbering are present and legible, and that the format matches what a genuine example should be — paper stock, color count, deckled edges. On a dual-signed collaboration, both hands should be there.
Third, weigh documentation, not certificates. Because Fairey prints have no official COA and no third-party board, what protects you is a clear account of where the piece came from and a seller who describes it honestly. Be more comfortable with a well-documented sheet and no fancy certificate than with a glossy certificate and a vague story.
Fourth, set your number before you look at the listing price. Decide what the piece is worth to you given the market context below, then see whether the offer fits. That order of operations is the single most useful habit in print collecting.
Living with the work: display and care
Once it's yours, a screen print on cotton rag is a durable object that rewards a little care. Frame it with a UV-protective glazing and an acid-free mat, and keep it off walls that take direct afternoon sun; cream stock is beautiful precisely because it hasn't yellowed, and light is the thing that yellows it. If the sheet has deckled edges, consider a float mount so the hand-cut edge shows rather than hiding under a window mat — on this print, the deckle is part of what you paid for. None of this is expensive relative to the work, and all of it protects both the experience of ownership and the eventual resale.
Frequently asked questions
Is it signed by both artists? Yes — hand-signed in pencil by Shepard Fairey and Sandra Chevrier, and hand-numbered.
Does it come with a certificate? Fairey issues no artist COA and there is no third-party board for his prints. Authenticity rests on the dual signatures, the documented edition characteristics, and provenance. Any certificate provided is documentation of the chain of ownership, not an official artist or third-party authentication.
What edition is this example? This is hand-numbered #46, offered within an edition of 200. Because the image exists in more than one documented configuration, confirm the exact edition and dimensions against the specific sheet if that detail drives your decision.
Is it framed? Refer to the current listing for this specific example's framing and condition; both are described per item, and the photographs form part of that description.
How is it shipped? Professionally packed and shipped fully insured, with signature confirmation on higher-value pieces. Free US shipping over $500, and eligible pieces carry a 14-day return window in original condition with all documentation.
The bottom line
The Beauty of Liberty and Equality is a rare thing: a collaboration where the two artists genuinely change each other's meaning, released on a date that gave the image real weight, in a signed and numbered edition that sold out and never came back. It sits at the crossing point of two separate collector markets, which is exactly why it has held attention when a lot of 2020 prints have not.
If it's the piece for you, the individual example — its number, its condition, its documentation — is where the decision actually lives.
See the current example and full details at Gauntlet Gallery →
