Shepard Fairey OBEY Workers Rights Signed Numbered Screen Print
Edition of 68/100|18" x 24"
About the work
About This Piece
Gauntlet Gallery · Authenticated Street Art
Shepard Fairey (OBEY)
Worker's Rights
Screen Print · Hand-Signed & Numbered · Cesar Chavez / UFW Tribute · Limited Edition ★ Limited Edition — Signed & Numbered by Shepard Fairey · One of Fairey's most historically resonant social justice prints — a direct tribute to Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers movement, executed in Fairey's signature propaganda-portrait style. What You Are Getting
This is Shepard Fairey's Worker's Rights — an original screen print hand-signed and numbered by Fairey in pencil. The work is one of Fairey's most historically grounded social justice prints, placing his unmistakable propaganda-portrait aesthetic directly in service of the American labor movement and the legacy of Cesar Chavez. It combines a monumental heroic portrait with layered newspaper source material drawn from coverage of the United Farm Workers, pesticide poisoning of farm workers, and the grape and lettuce boycotts of the late 1960s and 1970s.
The composition is dense with intentional visual argument. In the foreground, a close-cropped figure gazes upward in the classic heroic-aspirational pose Fairey has used throughout his career — rendered in his signature high-contrast stencil style in cream, gold, red, and black. A raised fist bearing a diagonal-striped sash (an explicit echo of the UFW flag's visual language) dominates the mid-composition. Behind all of this, the background is constructed from collaged newspaper clippings whose text is legible on close inspection: references to Cesar Chavez, the California Labor Federation, crop spraying and pesticide illness, and the words "Organize" and "Lettuce" — the core demands and tactics of the UFW's decades-long struggle for farm worker dignity.
A red circle — Fairey's recurring solar motif — anchors the upper right of the composition. The total effect is of a 1930s–40s labor movement poster channeled through Fairey's post-postmodern lens: deeply aware of its own propaganda grammar, and deploying that grammar to honor rather than mock. In a body of work defined by interrogating authority and image, Worker's Rights stands out as one of the works where Fairey's sincerity is most legible.
Why This Print Matters to Collectors Shepard Fairey's labor and social justice prints occupy a distinct collector tier: they combine his signature aesthetic with genuine historical subject matter, making them as compelling as documents as they are as objects. The Cesar Chavez and UFW imagery embedded in this work represents one of the most important American labor struggles of the 20th century. Fairey's signed limited editions in this thematic space have strong secondary market demand — bought by both art collectors and social history collectors — giving them a broader buyer pool than purely abstract or stylistic works.
Print Details Artist Shepard Fairey (OBEY) Title Worker's Rights Year
About the Work — Labor, Chavez, and the UFW
Cesar Chavez co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (later the United Farm Workers) with Dolores Huerta in 1962. The UFW's campaigns — including the Delano grape strike (1965–1970) and subsequent grape and lettuce boycotts — became among the most visible labor actions in American history, drawing support from the civil rights movement, the Catholic Church, and millions of ordinary Americans who stopped buying grapes and lettuce in solidarity with farm workers facing poverty wages and pesticide poisoning in California's Central Valley. The newspaper clippings embedded in this print's background are drawn directly from that period's coverage.
Fairey's engagement with labor history is not superficial. He has consistently cited the visual language of WPA-era labor posters, Soviet constructivist graphics, and UFW silk-screens as direct influences on his own practice. Worker's Rights makes that lineage explicit: the raised fist, the heroic upward gaze, the bold typography, and the use of collaged documentary source material are all formal gestures borrowed from that tradition and returned, updated and re-signed, to the contemporary moment. For Fairey, honoring the workers' rights struggle is also a meditation on how visual culture produces and reinforces political identity.
Visual Elements — Confirmed from Photographs What appears in the composition (confirmed from detail photographs): Primary figure: Heroic close-cropped male portrait, upward gaze, high-contrast stencil style — cream, gold, red, black · Secondary element: Raised fist with diagonal red/cream striped sash — visual echo of UFW flag · Background newspaper collage: Legible text references Cesar Chavez, California Labor Federation, crop spraying/pesticides, farm workers, "Organize," "Lettuce" (UFW boycott), protest crowd imagery · Red solar circle: Upper right — recurring Fairey motif · Ornamental elements: Floral/gear rosette detail visible in lower left — layered collage depth · Color palette: 4-color — cream/blush ground, warm gold mid-tone, strong red, deep black · Background texture: Heavy halftone/newsprint texture throughout — intentional documentary aesthetic
About Shepard Fairey (OBEY)
Born 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina, Shepard Fairey launched the Andre the Giant Has a Posse wheat-paste campaign in 1989 while studying at the Rhode Island School of Design — and never stopped. By the mid-2000s his OBEY Giant imagery was recognized across dozens of countries, his prints sold through galleries in Los Angeles, New York, and London, and his influence on graphic design, skateboarding culture, and political street art was well established. His 2008 Obama HOPE poster entered the Smithsonian Institution and became one of the most recognized political images of the 21st century.
Throughout his career, Fairey has consistently returned to labor history, social justice, and the visual grammar of political organizing as subject matter. Works like Worker's Rights represent the serious intellectual core beneath the mass-market recognition: a sustained, studied argument about how images shape politics, and a genuine tribute to the organizers and movements that used visual culture to fight for human dignity. His work is held in MoMA New York, LACMA, the National Portrait Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and dozens of major institutional collections internationally.
What Is Included
- Original Shepard Fairey Worker's Rights screen print
- Hand-signed by Shepard Fairey in pencil — lower margin
- Hand-numbered in pencil — lower margin (
- Multi-color screen print on cream Speckletone — unframed, stored flat
- Gauntlet Gallery digital provenance documentation
Shipping & Handling Professional packing. Full insurance. UPS delivery.
Shipped via UPS in a rigid flat-pack mailer with acid-free tissue interleaving, cardboard backing boards, and foam corner protection. Full insurance included. Tracking provided on all orders.
Domestic (USA): UPS Ground or UPS 2-Day — typically 3–7 business days.
International: UPS International — message us for a quote before purchasing. International buyers are responsible for local duties and VAT.
Every print leaves the gallery properly protected. Zero damage record.
More Shepard Fairey at Gauntlet Gallery We carry authenticated Shepard Fairey prints across all eras — early-2000s limited editions, the Damaged Stencil Series, letterpress works, music tributes, environmental and social justice prints. We also stock Banksy, Death NYC, and signed music collectibles. Add us to your Saved Sellers to be notified when new inventory arrives. Gauntlet Gallery · Authenticated Street Art & Collectibles Since 2012 · View All Listings
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SHEPARD FAIREY
Few contemporary artists have bridged underground culture and institutional recognition as effectively as Shepard Fairey. Emerging from skate and punk subcultures with the original Obey Giant campaign, he built a visual language rooted in propaganda aesthetics, bold iconography, and political commentary.
What makes Fairey compelling for collectors isn’t just name recognition — it’s durability. His work sits at the intersection of activism, design, and pop culture. \
From the globally recognized Hope poster to decades of tightly controlled screenprint editions, he has demonstrated both cultural relevance and disciplined market structure.
Institutional validation from MoMA, the Smithsonian, and the V&A reinforces long-term credibility. Meanwhile, secondary market data shows consistent liquidity and steady appreciation across core prints.
For collectors, this is cultural equity with infrastructure behind it — not trend-driven volatility.
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