Stencil Art twenty years before Banksy: Banksy vs. The French artist worked in anonymity until 1991 when he was arrested by the French authorities and his identity was revealed. His innovation? The use of the stencil! A new technique that the artist used to adapt the style of American Street Art to the architecture and social context of the Parisian capital.īlek’s first stencils were black rats, a real invasion of the city since they appeared on all the walls! Rats, like the word Rat in his pseudonym according to the artist, they are the only animal capable of surviving the apocalypse, a symbol of freedom.īlek le Rat took his name from Blek le Roc (Il Grande Blek in Italian), modifying it with a play on words: Rat is an anagram of art. One of the first graffiti artists, Blek le Rat started painting in 1981 on the streets of Paris, drawing inspiration from graffiti he saw during a trip to New York ten years earlier.
Blek le Rat brings street art from New York to Paris
Since the 2000s, his artistic work has evolved to become more openly political.įor Blek le Rat, the history of art is another source of great inspiration, as many of his subjects are quotations from the works of great masters such as Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Leonardo da Vinci. His production is deeply linked to social themes, the protagonists of his works are mainly solitary individuals living in the city. He began stencilling the walls of Paris in 1981 - when road painting hadn't yet become correlated with criminal action - spray-painting little black rats running across the walls of their fourteenth Arrondissement.Blek le Rat ( Xavier Prou, Paris 1951) is one of the pioneers of international Street Art and is considered the father of Stencil Art and a reference point for all subsequent street artists, including Banksy. Then he went on studying design, studying the effect of the imaginative possibilities of this urban atmosphere. When he came back to France with vibrant graffiti pictures in your mind, Blek registered at Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris to examine etching, serigraphy and lithography. His posters of kidnapped French journalist Florence Aubenas helped elevated public awareness of her position, pressuring journalists and politicians to perform harder for her launch.Īfter Blek le Rat was seen New York in 1972 that was the very first time he'd seen graffiti in his lifetime. Originally famous for stencilling a giant picture image of a rat around Paris, which to him represented both liberty and also the dissemination of artwork throughout town as though it were the plague, lately What is Blek Le Rat known for?īlek's job has become more political, focusing on the homeless, the environment, and other social causes. Using stencils rather than stylized lettering for graffiti, Blek was among the very first true road artists. Pioneering French graffiti artist Blek Le Rat counts the notorious Banksy one of his numerous admirers.
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