Blek pioneered the contemporary generation of Parisian pochoiristes. While a student at the Beaux Arts school in Paris almost 20 years ago, he encountered remnants of the finely detailed poster wall art done by Ernest Pignon Ernest, a painter who had put up over a thousand images of Arthur Rimbaud. Ernest Pignon's work unlocked Blek's own passion for street art.

In 1981, he and his friend, Gerard, began putting up simple, black stencil figures because, says Blek, RIt was faster, attracted the eye more easily. I wanted to disturb, surprise." Many of Blek's characters - mythological figures or characters who in some way represent the neighborhood in which they are painted - are human size. "I wanted them to be imposing," he says, "to provoke by tricking the eye of the viewer."

Blek felt himself to be an heir of the combative political stencil artists of the early 20th century, working at night and dodging the police. In 1990, threatened with jail, Blek returned to painting and showing his work in galleries.