Artwork Description
The Missing Peace Pop Street Artwork Limited Edition Giclee Print on Fine Art Paper by Urban Graffiti Modern Artist Pushead.
2021 Signed Screenprint on fine art paper. 14x22 Edition 59
Pushead – The Missing Peace and the Anatomy of Rebellion
Pushead’s The Missing Peace is a visceral and unforgettable image from one of street pop art’s most raw and aggressive voices. Known for his uncompromising visual style and deep connections to underground music and counterculture, Pushead (real name Brian Schroeder, USA) delivers a grotesque yet strangely poetic artwork that walks the line between life and decay, chaos and clarity. Released as a limited edition fine art giclée screenprint in 2021, The Missing Peace measures 14 by 22 inches and is hand-signed and numbered in an edition of 59. It exemplifies Pushead’s longstanding commitment to visual confrontation and rebellion through meticulously inked terror and anatomical fragmentation. In the image, a partially decomposed figure clutches a disembodied eyeball between skeletal fingers, holding it up like a relic or defiant gesture. Jagged fingernails and shredded bandages wrap the twisted limbs as stray strands of hair spill downward. The backdrop is smeared with graveyard silhouettes and textures that feel as though they were etched in blood and ink. The entire composition pulses with hallucinogenic energy, rendered in stippled dotwork and corrosive washes that reveal both technical mastery and raw emotional force.
Pushead’s Visual Legacy in Punk and Street Culture
Before his rise as a street pop and graffiti icon, Pushead was widely known for his artwork within the punk and metal music scenes of the 1980s and 1990s. He provided album covers, shirt designs, and promotional artwork for legendary bands like Metallica, Misfits, and Septic Death—his own hardcore band. His visual language was instantly recognizable: tortured skulls, anatomical dissection, rotting flesh, and other motifs that echoed the chaos and disillusionment of youth subcultures. In the process, he helped cement a new aesthetic that fused punk ethos with street-level iconography and horror-illustration stylings. That same aesthetic is present in The Missing Peace, but elevated into the fine art world through careful screenprinting and gallery framing. Despite the polished medium, the work never loses its bite. It is a grim reminder that art can be both collectible and confrontational, a core philosophy behind many graffiti and street pop artists who operate between limited edition exclusivity and cultural disruption.
Symbolism and Dissonance in The Missing Peace
The title The Missing Peace plays on dual meanings: peace as a state of being, and piece as a physical fragment. The image itself suggests both are absent. The character’s gaze, displaced into a hand-held eye, evokes the idea of forcibly witnessing a dismembered reality. Peace, both personal and societal, has been torn from the body and is now held up as a symbol of what’s lost or forcibly taken. The figure’s hand gesture is not just grotesque—it is symbolic, potentially alluding to punk rock’s signature rebellion or a corrupted peace sign. Pushead’s background in zine culture and hand-drawn poster work carries through here. Even in this refined form, his lines retain the urgency of xeroxed flyers and back alley sticker bombs. The Missing Peace may exist on museum-grade paper, but it speaks to viewers from alleyways, underground clubs, and skate decks.
Graffiti Horror as Modern Myth
Unlike more polished urban art contemporaries, Pushead remains loyal to horror’s raw aesthetics and subcultural codes. He doesn’t decorate walls or canvases to please the eye but rather to challenge it—to make it stare back at what society has chosen to ignore. In the context of street pop art and graffiti artwork, Pushead’s work functions like a warning: the peace you’re searching for may already be in pieces, and you might have to look it in the eye—detached, grotesque, and all—to even begin to understand what’s missing.
