Stencil Graffiti

By now a familiar sight on city streets, Stencil Graffiti gets a tribute in this book showcasing the work of the most prominent and important stencil artists working today. Author and U.K.-based graphic artist Tristan Manco gives a brief history of the form (whose origins he traces to the political street stencils of Fascist Italy and other Southern European and Latin American movements), then spotlights artists like Thomas Baumg rtel, whose signature bananas decorate surfaces all over Cologne; Miss-Tic, creator of sultry female figures ubiquitous in Paris; British parodist Bansky, who got his start in ""the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s"" and other, mostly European talents. (Apr. 29)