Shepard Fairey / Obey Giant
“Ali Canvas Print” • Signed & Numbered • Edition of 450

Limited Edition Screen Print • 18″ × 24″ on Cream Speckletone Paper
Hand-Signed in Pencil • Obey Giant Embossed Blind Stamp • 2010

What You Are Getting

This is an authentic Shepard Fairey “Ali Canvas Print” limited edition screen print from an edition of 450, hand-signed and hand-numbered in pencil by the artist. The print carries the Obey Giant embossed blind stamp. Printed on cream Speckletone fine art paper at 18″ × 24″, this is a hand-pulled silkscreen released on May 13, 2010 — Fairey’s commissioned portrait of Muhammad Ali and one of the most compelling works in the Canvas Portrait series.

The Ali Canvas was featured in Fairey’s “MAY DAY” solo exhibition at Deitch Projects, 18 Wooster Street, New York City (May 1–29, 2010) — one of the most significant gallery presentations of Fairey’s career, staged at a legendary SoHo space during Jeffrey Deitch’s final year before becoming director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The print represents a subject Fairey had wanted to tackle for years. In his own words: “I’m not a big fan of boxing, or organized sports in general, but athletic competition can highlight an inspiring human spirit to triumph over great odds. Muhammad Ali embodies that spirit, and his dogged tenacity led him to three heavyweight titles.”

Print Details

Authentication

• Hand-signed in pencil by Shepard Fairey.
• Hand-numbered. Edition of 450, individually numbered by the artist.
• Obey Giant embossed blind stamp. The Obey Giant studio’s physical impression pressed directly into the paper — a tactile authentication marker that cannot be replicated by printing, scanning, or digital reproduction.

About the Work

The “Canvas” designation in Fairey’s print titles carries a specific meaning. The composition is designed to simulate the look of a Fairey painting or hand-painted multiple (HPM) — with visible collage elements, layered textures, and what appear to be brush strokes in the background — while being entirely screen printed. The technique creates visual depth and tactile richness that reads as mixed media at a glance, but the precision is pure silkscreen. This is Fairey collapsing the distance between his fine art canvases and his editioned prints — giving the edition buyer a composition that carries the weight and complexity of a unique work.

Ali’s portrait is rendered through Fairey’s signature posterization: photographic tonality reduced to hard-edged color fields that transform a photograph into a graphic icon. The face carries Ali’s trademark intensity — the focused gaze, the set jaw, the coiled energy of an athlete who understood that presence was as much a weapon as a left hook. Fairey frames Ali not as a sports figure but as a cultural and political force: a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, a figure whose verbal pyrotechnics anticipated hip-hop, and a man whose refusal to be defined by a single identity — boxer, activist, entertainer, Muslim — made him one of the twentieth century’s most potent symbols of individual defiance against institutional power.

This is precisely the territory Fairey’s work occupies. The Obey Giant project has always been about the power of images to command attention, obedience, and resistance. Ali’s face — one of the most recognized on the planet — becomes, in Fairey’s hands, a study in how iconography is built: through repetition, through media, through the sheer force of a personality that refused to be contained. The background layers of distressed texture and collage fragments embed Ali within the visual grammar of propaganda and mass communication that runs through all of Fairey’s work, while the portrait itself transcends that system through pure charisma.

Why This Print Works on a Wall

Ali’s face is one of the most universally recognizable in modern history, and Fairey’s graphic treatment amplifies that recognition into something monumental. The posterized portrait has the visual scale of a billboard even at 18″ × 24″ — the hard-edged tonal breaks and bold color fields project across a room in a way that photographic portraits cannot. The simulated canvas texture gives the print a warmth and material presence that distinguishes it from Fairey’s cleaner political editions, making it equally at home in a sports collection, a contemporary art display, or a living space where a single commanding image sets the tone. The Ali Canvas pairs naturally with the Basquiat and Haring Canvas prints for collectors building the complete series, but it also stands powerfully on its own — Ali’s gaze does not share a wall easily, and it doesn’t need to.

About the Artist

About Muhammad Ali

What Is Included

• Shepard Fairey “Ali Canvas Print” screen print — 18″ × 24″ on cream Speckletone paper
• Hand-signed and hand-numbered by Shepard Fairey — Edition of 450
• Obey Giant embossed blind stamp

Ships unframed, flat, with protective materials.

Who This Is For

This print is ideal for Shepard Fairey collectors looking for one of the strongest portrait editions in his catalog — a commissioned work with Deitch Projects exhibition provenance and Sotheby’s auction history, Muhammad Ali collectors and sports memorabilia enthusiasts seeking a fine art treatment that elevates Ali beyond the boxing context into the cultural and political icon he became, collectors building the complete Canvas Portrait series alongside the Basquiat and Keith Haring editions, or anyone who wants a single print that carries the visual authority to own a wall. Ali’s combination of athletic greatness, political courage, and cultural magnetism makes this one of the most universally resonant subjects in Fairey’s entire print output.

Shipping

This screen print ships flat with protective materials to prevent surface contact, bending, and corner damage during transit. Fully insured with tracking. International shipping available upon request.

Questions? Message us anytime — happy to provide additional photos or details. Serious collectors welcome.