Blek le Rat

image: Blek le Rat

Thru 18 May 2012

The popularity of street art in the 21st century has seen a renewal of attention on some of the movement’s pioneers.
The satirical and surreal spray-painted stencil works synonymous with Banksy and seen now on city walls across the world were first initiated in the early 1980s by Blek le Rat, a French artist who eschewed American-style freehand graffiti for the replication of monochrome images – most notably rats (hence his name) but also figures like soldiers, who would appear in their hundreds across Paris.