Blek Le Rat All

After the rats he moved onto using life sizes portraits. The fist of these was an old man wearing glasses and screaming. Blek has now painted on walls all over the world and has influenced a whole generation of street artists. He was a pioneer of stencil graffiti and one of the first artist to move to using a symbol rather than his name as his tag.

Blek le rat created his mane from a cartoon strip he used to read as a child ‘Blek le Rock’. He changed the ‘le Rock’ to ‘le Rat’ because his first stencil was a rat and because you can find art in rat.

He no longer paints on walls after in 1991 he was tried for ten years worth of graffiti and had to pay substantial fines, and would face jail if caught again. He continues to produce work but now it is in the form of posters rather than painting directly on walls. Blek le rat lives in an abandoned 10th Century castle somewhere in France with his wife and teenage son.