If you are thinking you have missed the boat / should have purchased BANKSY when you could have done – TAKE NOTE!

This is the start of the prices rising for Blek Le Rat – who is Banksy’s hero (see quote below) At the IMPORTANT Auction at Bonhams 5th Feb 2008 it was assumed by many that the Banksy pictures would fly away while the other artists would struggle yet one estimated at £3-5,000- fetched over £50,000 by Nick Walker , and BLEK’s made great money too. THAT is the day that Urban Art came of age. Some of Banksy’s prints are selling for more than an Original by Le Rat and these are going up.

A legendary figure in street art Blek Le Rat (Xavier Prou) was born in Paris in 1951. Thought by many to be the father of stencil graffiti as an art form Blek began his unique, complex and intelligent stencil works on the streets of Paris in the 1980’s. Hugely influential to the present generation of street artists the importance of Blek’s work should not be underestimated as this quote from Banksy suggests: ‘Every time I think I’ve painted something slightly original, I find out that Blek Le Rat has done it as well. Only twenty years earlier…’