He studied fine art and architecture at Beaux-Arts in Paris, graduating in 1982.

His street name is said to originate from a childhood cartoon “Blek Le Roc”, also using “rat” as an anagram for “art”. He started decorating the streets of Paris in 1981 with a rat stencil, hoping to create an invasion of rats - “the only free animal in the city”, while creating a style that would suit Paris and not copy the American style.

He was the first people to use stencils to make public art on the street using icons instead of writing his name. He is frequently cited as a major influence of artists like Banksy and Shepard Fairey and through his work in Paris he established a style of urban art that quickly spread through Europe and the United States.īlek describes his early work as apolitical, explaining that he just wanted a way to stand out and to free himself from the feeling of anonymity caused by living in a major city.

Frequently called the godfather of modern street art, Blek le Rat inspired hundreds of artists around the world with his stenciled style. Like repressed experiences or feelings that suddenly shoot back into consciousness, the crows seem to haunt the disembodied worker in a Hitchcock-like manner.Blek Le Rat (Xavier Prou) was born in Paris, France in 1951. Le retour du refoulé ( The Return of the Repressed) is both the title of Levalet’s in situ work at the Völklingen Ironworks World Cultural Heritage Site, and a psychoanalytical term coined by Sigmund Freud. This meticulous manual aspect sets his works apart in the crowded world of street art. His highly realistic black and white figures have all been applied to paper by hand, and then pasted onto surfaces. Where Levalet differs considerably from such figures is in the fact that he is not a stencil artist. But they contain less social commentary and therefore seem more playful. In terms of composition, his ideas are very similar to those of stencil artists such as Banksy or Blek le Rat. The paintings of Charles Leval, aka Levalet, are all about the human form and the various ways it interacts with its surroundings.

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