His name originates from the comic book Blek le Roc, using 'rat' as an anagram for 'art'. The exhibition entitled 'Le Ciel Est Bleu, La Vie Est Belle' ('The sky is blue, life is beautiful'), featured wooden panels, canvas, screen-print, and photographs, tracing the artist's oeuvre from the early 1980s to the present.īlek began his artwork in 1981, painting stencils of rats on the walls of Paris streets.

It included paintings, silkscreen, and three-dimensional artwork.īlek also had an exhibition in December 2009 at the Metro Gallery in Melbourne, a centre of street art in Australia. His American gallery debut took place at Subliminal Projects Gallery in Los Angeles in 2008.

He participated in the Cans Festival in 2008, which featured outdoor street stencil painting in Waterloo, London by many of street art's biggest names. exhibition in London at the Leonard Street Gallery. In October 2006, Blek le Rat had his first solo U.K. In 2006 he began his series of images representing the homeless, which depict them standing, sitting, or lying on sidewalks, in attempts to bring attention to what he regards as a global problem. From that point on, he has worked exclusively with pre-stenciled posters, citing the speedier application of the medium to walls, as well as lessened punishment should he be caught in the act. His oldest preserved street art graffito is a 1991 replica of Caravaggio's Madonna di Loreta, which was rediscovered behind posters on a house wall in Leipzig, Germany, in 2012.īlek was arrested in 1991 while he was stencilling a replica of Caravaggio's Madonna and Child. In 1983 Blek began to paint life-size stencils, which alongside his rats, have become his trademark and have influenced generations of street artists around the world.īlek worked consistently through the 1990s and 2000s.

Blek began his artwork in 1981, painting stencils of rats on the walls of Paris streets.

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