Blek Le Rat Limited Edition

bleach and a stiff brush. Which has all worked out very well for him. He is the French pioneer of stenciled graffiti with a message. Stencilled because its quick, and allows for the hard work to be completed at home, and so for a complicated image to appear on a wall within the two minutes that he reckons is the limit, the time allowed before the police come. Which is good to know if your first graffiti project involves a plague of rats running through the streets of Paris in 1981.

After studying etching, lithography and painting at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris and being inspired by the graffiti art in New York in the 1970s, he wanted to create something different to New York Graffiti, something that would fit in with the politics, history and architecture of Europe. He was the first to create life size stencils of figured that seemed to creep across the Parisian walls like shadows and jump out from alleys, haunting the Citiy. His intelligent and complex stenciling has now appeared in cities across the world for three decades.

If all of this sounds a bit familiar, take comfort in the fact that since Banksy made it big, he , fully acknowledged by Banksy as a huge influence, is also now an international phenomenon. This shy, retiring Grandad of Street art is a household name, and Blek le Rat limited edition prints and original paintings are exhibited widely.