Blek Le Rat

(French, born 1952)

Man Who Walks Through Walls, 2009

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Private collection, Melbourne, acquired directly from the artist


Blek Le Rat, born Xavier Prou, is considered by many as the Father of Stencil Graffiti. Growing up in a privileged family, Prou graduated from École des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 1982 with a degree in Architecture. On a trip to New York in his childhood, he developed a fascination with the street art of the city. Ten years later, inspired by the New York graffiti, Blek began painting stencils of rats around Paris in 1981, which marked the beginning of street art sweeping across Paris. He created most of his stencils by hand to control the level of detail in each piece, working predominantly with black and white. This signature style inspired and influenced many other street artists. Blek is deemed a trailblazer in street art, and has been credited as the first to transform stencil from basic lettering into imagery, and the one to invent the life-sized stencils.

The artist describes his early works as a way to stand out and to free himself from the feeling of anonymity caused by living in a major city. More recently, he has started to create more socially engaged works depicting marginalized individuals. At the same time, the illegal nature of his work and street art becoming more mainstream have led him to more gallery exhibitions. Man Who Walks Through Walls is a self-portrait from 2009, following his first gallery exhibition in Leonard Street Gallery, London (2006). It captures the essence of the artist as both of bourgeoisie background, and an artist for the people, striving to inspire those who would never go to an exhibition.

Fellow street artist, Shepard Fairey, once said: "Blek le Rat's stencils distill the essence of the human struggle into poetically concise images."