Blek le Rat

Xavier Prou, known as Blek le Rat, was born in 1951 in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris. After a 1971 trip to New York that exposed him to the emerging graffiti scene, he began working with stencils on the streets of Paris in 1981, starting with his rat silhouettes before extending the technique to life-sized human figures in 1983. Regarded as the pioneer of stencil art in France, he had a direct influence on Banksy, who has acknowledged repeatedly finding himself beaten to an idea by twenty years.

from rat to human figures

Blek le Rat’s stencilled rats work as a visual play on words, the animal forming an anagram of the word “art” and standing, for him, as a symbol of survival and urban freedom. From 1983 onward, he applied the same technique to life-sized human figures, often solitary silhouettes, before devoting an entire series to homeless people starting in 2006. This shift from an animal motif to an engaged human figure laid groundwork later taken up by many contemporary stencil artists, Banksy foremost among them.