And while in New York the graffiti gained shape and meaning in the late 70s, Paris had already moved into a distinct street art direction by then, which is often unjustly overlooked. Stencils, posters and murals appeared around the French capital, announcing a novel understanding of public art, introducing various techniques in addition to the preferred New-Yorkian aerosol. French street art was growing on the country’s artistic heritage, incorporating poster wheat pasting, stenciling and other innovative expressions that did not revolve around lettering alone.
Announcements of street art can be detected already in the Parisian sixties, with the activities of avant-garde artists, Nouveau Realists, and among publicly aware Conceptualists. One of the followers of New Realism was Jacques Villeglé, who devised an innovative way of employing existing posters in artistic creation. At the time, his decollage techniques and an abundant use of typography were considered exceptionally fresh, whereas Villeglé was unaware he was in fact participating in what we today call ‘upcycling’. His art was directly bound to the street, to the grounded life, the anonymous, the marginal, made with found posters