Christian Guémy aka C215 is one of France’s leading urban stencil artists.

Born in 1973, he has been working on the streets of the world since the early 2000s. He exhibits his work on objects and canvas in several galleries in France and abroad. He has exhibited in numerous national museums and regularly collaborates with public, cultural and social institutions.

C215 is now considered one of the most recognized stencil artists on the global street art scene.

“C215’s art captures a light, depth, and humanity that is difficult, and rare using stencils, his chosen medium. Stencils tend to flatten images and make them static, but C215 has developed a style of illustrating and stenciling that yields an impressionistic illumination of his subject’s character. Even though his technique is meticulously refined, C215’s work transcends the formal and seems to get to the core of compassion and belief in the human spirit. Encountering C215’s pieces on the street is always makes me happy “

Shepard Fairey / OBEY GIANT

C215 is a French street artist and pochoirist who paints with spray cans in the street.

Armed with his can and spray, C215 breathes new aesthetic life into dirty gray walls. He dresses them up with colorful stenciled or freehand portraits. His models? His daughter, Nina, is a frequent visitor, as are many of the anonymous people who populate the neighborhoods. A French street artist based in Vitry-sur-Seine, Christian Guémy alias C215 has been working since 2006 in the ugliest parts of the city. “Where I paint, it stinks of piss”, he says, explaining that the street art movement was born in the suburbs of New York out of “man’s desperate desire to take possession of the built environment”. In industrial zones where concrete has hitherto left no room for emotion.

C215 is a humanist street artist with a keen interest in art history.

C215 grew up in the provinces, then moved to Paris to study art history, economics and languages. A university education that would later give him the distance he needed to carry out his work without elitism or egocentricity. Passionate about the Renaissance, he forged a humanist culture. C215 draws its influences from centuries of art. From the classical era of Caravaggio’s oil paintings and Boticcelli’s illustrations to the contemporary artist Ernest Pignon-Ernest, whom he considers to be the first “French street artist”.

Christian Guémy’s stencil works are colorful and ephemeral

At the age of 32, C215, devastated by a romantic break-up, he began painting portraits of his ex-wife and daughter on the walls of their neighborhoods. Little by little, C215’s work began to take shape, with his colorful stencils flourishing in the streets. The broken beings he painted in his early days give way to luminous gazes. Man rebuilds himself. C215 likes its subjects to blend in perfectly with their surroundings. His portraits of real people are vibrant with emotion. Offering local residents works that belong to them. Works that he knows will never last. Vitry-sur-Seine, the town where he set up his studio at the end of 2007, has become France’s Street Art capital thanks to him. Tourists from all over the world flock to discover over 150 works by numerous international artists.