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In recent years Blek’s work has become more political, focusing on the homeless, the environment, and other social causes.

French police revealed his birth name after arresting him in 1991, and since then, Blek has been arrested or harassed by police in the United States, Argentina and the UK. The artist worked consistently through the 1990s and 2000s. Blek is now often credited as the inventor of full-scale human character stencils. In the mid-1980s, David Hockney, an English artist who created life-sized crayon drawings, inspired Blek to try larger stencils. His earliest piece was an oversize rat, which appeared all over Paris. He said, “If the people cannot come to the gallery, we bring the gallery to the people! Kids who would never go to a show see our work in the street and are inspired to express themselves through art rather than turning to vandalism or repressing their voices.” Rats were an ideal subject because “they create fear, they are synonymous with invasion and they are the only wild animals apart from pigeons that live in the city.”

The artist had soon painted hundreds of rats around the city using stencils. Prou began using the Blek le Rat alias, derived from an Italian comic called Blek le Roc. When he saw them tagging the abandoned cabins, he decided to adopt graffiti to bring the new art form to Parisian streets. Upon returning to France, he worked with local teens in tenement buildings. Before his graduation, Prou visited New York City and developed a fascination with the city’s street art. Study of architecture introduced him to the urban landscape at the same time he was discovering a new world of politics and sociology of class. He set the stage for an artistic revolution through years of absolute obscurity.īlek was born Xavier Prou in Paris and studied fine art and architecture at Beaux-Arts in Paris, graduating in 1982. He struggled years before urban art was a somewhat acceptable genre, documenting his own works and trying to find ways to make a living as a professional artist. He is regarded as the inventor of the Stencils in the context of Street Art.ĭespite the enormous role he played in 1980s and 1990s street art, Blek le Rat kept a low profile through most of his career to avoid prison time, fines and public harassment.

At the beginning of the 80s, he first brought pictures on Parisian walls with the help of stencils. He is frequently cited as a major influence of artists like Banksy and Space Invader, and through his work in Paris he established a style of urban art that quickly spread through Europe and eventually the United States. Blek Le Rat, born1952, is a pioneering French graffiti artist who inspired hundreds of artists around the world with his stenciled style.