Blek le Rat

Blek le Rat ( born 1951 in Boulogne- Billancourt, France, real name Xavier Prou ) is considered the father of stencil art ( street art ) in public space - although have used to spread their graffiti before him punks this technique. The pseudonym is based on the Italian comic Blek le Roc.

He studied graphic design and then architecture at the École des Beaux Arts.

Blek le Rat first started together with his friend Gérard Dumas as artist duo BLEK. In October 1981, both tried in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, in the Rue des Thermopyles, inspired by New York graffiti writing that Blek had seen at the beginning of the 1970s with a trip to the U.S., first to spray a hands-free Piece, what however, completely failed in his eyes. Then he suggested Pochoirs to customize as he remembered as a child on a trip to Italy with his parents to have seen small stencil graffiti with the head of Mussolini with helmet in Padova. Henceforth, he works with this technique. His first designs were small -scale works such as rats, tanks and bananas.

Blek le Rats artistic development was decisively influenced by David Hockney movie A Bigger Splash. The scene, painted in the Hockney with brush and oil paint the figure of one of his friends on the wall of his apartment, Blek le Rat referred to as the most impressive thing he had ever seen.

At the end of 1983 the duo parted BLEK and so Xavier Prou adopted the name BLEK LE RAT.

Also in 1983 he sprayed his first large-format template that shows an old scolding on British soldiers with Irish cap, as creative template used was a photo in the French newspaper Libération. Many other large-scale works followed. For example, Tom Waits, Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, François Mitterrand, Marcel Dassault, fauns, centaurs, Jesus Christ and various Madonnas after old masters such as Michelangelo and Caravaggio, as well as a self portrait with suitcases full Pochoirs. Blek le Rat himself says about his work: " You are my figures, they resemble me all somehow, she introduced me to the world from which a person imagines another. Whenever I painted on the walls, I had the feeling that a part of me to let himself on the walls of all the cities I visited. "

Except in his hometown of Paris, he worked among other things in cities like Berlin, Cologne, Leipzig, Wiesbaden, London, New York, San Francisco, Florence, Naples, Lisbon, Buenos Aires and Marrakech.

A In 1991, forming Schablonengraffito " Madonna and Child ", which has dedicated Blek his great love, his present wife Sybille, was rediscovered in Leipzig in early 2012. It was many years pasted posters. In summer 2012, it was restored by the artist and included now in the Saxon monument list. According to the artist, it is during the work to the oldest surviving traces of his art.

Pictures of Blek le Rat

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