Origins of Stencil Art: New York, Florence, and Paris in the Late 1970s

The article traces the origins of stencil art as a recognized artistic form, identifying three pioneers who independently created early stencils in different cities around 1979–1981. The first known artistic stencil appeared in New York in early 1979, created by Eric Drooker: a purple silhouette of a man with an umbrella, spray-painted across Lower Manhattan. Drooker recounts that within a month, all his stencils were crossed out with black marker by an 18-year-old Jean-Michel Basquiat, who added his SAMO tag. Meanwhile, in Florence, Italy, Arnaldo Marinai—inspired by Drooker's umbrella man during a stay in New York—created his own stencil in September 1979: a flying frogman ("Frogman"), which he called a "poetic drawing." Marinai, born in Florence in 1941, had spent six months in New York in 1978–1979, where he was struck by the non-aggressive, apolitical nature of Drooker's stencil compared to the political slogans on Italian walls. The third pioneer, Blek le Rat (Xavier Prou), is considered the father of stencil art; in 1981 he began stenciling rat silhouettes on Parisian walls. The article draws on the first issue of Wails Papers, an episodic publication dedicated to street art, which documents these early histories. The author, Pino Boresta, encourages readers to seek out Wails Papers and notes that the story includes further anecdotes, such as a mermaid seemingly chased by the frogman.