About the artwork
This work entitled Art Is Not Peace But War, created by Blek le Rat in 2008, consists of a set of four silkscreen prints produced in editions of 100. Each image captures one of the artist's interventions in urban space, featuring his emblematic figures integrated into their real-life environment. The black-and-white treatment reinforces the documentary dimension of the whole, while preserving the stencil aesthetic that characterizes his work. The compositions show characters in isolation or in interaction with the architecture and graffiti-laden walls, creating a dialogue between the affixed image and its context. The whole works as a fragmented narrative of the city, where each scene bears witness to the artist's furtive presence and the way in which his works are inscribed in the urban landscape, between appearance and disappearance.
Expert opinion
This collection is a particularly apt illustration of Blek le Rat's philosophy, for whom street art is a committed and sometimes confrontational gesture. The title itself asserts a strong position, opposing the idea of consensual art to that of a more direct practice, rooted in social and urban reality. These silkscreens document the very essence of his in situ work, capturing works in their original context, giving them both artistic and quasi-archival value. The interest of this collection lies in its ability to convey the street art experience beyond the isolated object, showing its interaction with the city and its inhabitants. It is a coherent and significant corpus, particularly relevant for a collector sensitive to the history of street art and its most authentic forms.
About the artist
Blek le Rat is one of the pioneers of French urban art. Beginning to paint with stencils on the street in 1981, his work is recognizable by the little silhouettes of rats running along the walls of Paris. This anagram of the word "art" became his signature alongside his more or less famous life-size human figures. This seminal stencil work greatly influenced Banksy's a few years later.
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