Mike Winkelmann, professionally known as Beeple (or Beeple-Crap), is a pioneering American digital artist, graphic designer, and animator. He is one of the most prominent and commercially successful figures in digital and NFT art.
Key Facts
Born: June 20, 1981 (age 44) in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, USA.
Education: Studied Computer Science at Purdue University (graduated 2003). Self-taught artist with no formal fine arts training.
Residence: Charleston, South Carolina, where he operates Beeple Studios — a large creative space focused on digital art, installations, and community events.
The Everydays Project
This is his most famous ongoing work. Since May 1, 2007, Mike has created and posted one new piece of digital art every single day without missing a single day (over 6,900 consecutive days as of 2026).
He often dedicates each year to mastering a specific skill or tool (e.g., Cinema 4D, rendering fundamentals, etc.). The project built his discipline, technical skills, and massive archive.
Highlight: Everydays: The First 5000 Days — a massive digital collage sold as an NFT at Christie’s in March 2021 for $69.3 million. This was one of the first major NFT sales by a traditional auction house and catapulted him (and digital/NFT art) into mainstream attention.
Style and Themes
Beeple’s work is known for being:
Hyper-detailed, chaotic, and maximalist
Satirical, grotesque, politically charged, and darkly humorous
Commentary on technology, consumerism, politics, internet culture, and AI
Blending 3D rendering, collage, animation, and increasingly robotics + AI
Recent Work (as of 2026)
Large-scale immersive installations combining physical robotics and digital elements.
Regular Animals (robotic dogs with heads of figures like tech leaders, artists, etc.) — shown at Art Basel Miami Beach and later at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie (April–May 2026). This piece went massively viral.
BEEPLE: / INFINITE_LOOP — a major survey exhibition in Silicon Valley (Palo Alto) in April 2026, exploring repetition and infinity in his practice.