Blek le Rat

Xavier Prou was born on 15 November 1951 in Boulogne-Billancourt, in the western suburbs of Paris. He trained formally at the Ecole nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, which he entered in 1972, studying etching, engraving, lithography, and painting before earning a Diplome superieur d'arts plastiques in 1976. He then began architecture studies at the Unite pedagogique d'architecture 6 in Paris-La Villette starting in 1977, though the exact architecture qualification and its completion year are not clearly documented in available sources.

Inspired by stencil graffiti he saw in New York, Prou began stenciling small rats around Paris in 1981, adopting the name Blek le Rat, a play on a French comic-book character. He soon moved on to life-size human figures, a technique that became his signature and that predated, by roughly two decades, much of the stencil-based street art that followed. His first gallery exhibition took place in 1986 at Galerie Agnes b. in Paris. In 2008, Thames and Hudson published his first monograph, Getting Through the Walls, timed to a solo exhibition at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York. In 2012, the Centre Pompidou added works by Blek le Rat to its permanent street-art display.

Banksy has repeatedly credited him as a formative influence, describing Blek le Rat's stencil work as predating his own by roughly two decades. As of mid-2026, current biographies and gallery materials describe Blek le Rat in the present tense, living in France and continuing to exhibit, with a 2024 solo show, War and Peace, at Woodbury House in London.

Blek le Rat is consistently described across gallery, museum, and press sources as the father of stencil graffiti and a pioneer of the international street art movement, a reputation built less on formal prizes than on his documented priority in the medium and his acknowledged influence on later artists. Banksy's own public statements crediting him as a source have become a fixture of how his work is discussed. Institutional recognition, including the Centre Pompidou's addition of his work to its permanent street-art display in 2012, has reinforced his standing as a historical rather than purely commercial figure. Documented, verbatim critical assessment from named art critics at major outlets was not located in available sources.

Blek le Rat's current auction record is held by Tango, a 2021 work that sold for GBP 95,250 (about USD 118,472) at Phillips in London on 19 April 2024, surpassing his previous high, reported for a 2016 sale of The Adventures of Crazy Frank at Tajan in Paris (sources give the price as roughly USD 75,000 to 78,000, or about EUR 70,200). His secondary market remains thin relative to his historical importance, with most transaction volume concentrated in works on paper and studio editions sold through galleries including West Chelsea Contemporary and Woodbury House, though no gallery is confirmed as his exclusive current representative.

There is no catalogue raisonne for Blek le Rat, so provenance and authentication rely primarily on the artist's own studio and website; no gallery is confirmed as his exclusive current representative. His auction history is comparatively short and concentrated in a small number of high-value results, so any single sale, including the current record set at Phillips in 2024, should be read as a data point rather than a stable trend line. Because his practice spans ephemeral street interventions and later studio editions and prints, collectors should pay close attention to medium, edition size, and documented exhibition history when assessing a specific work.