Walig Nicolet, known as Renk, was born in Rennes in 1987. A self-taught French artist, he moved from graffiti to landscape painting. He grew up in an artistic milieu. His mother taught visual arts, his father worked in advertising and as an artist, and his uncle draws comics. His brother and sister are much older: he grew up almost as an only child.

School, however, did not suit him. His education was turbulent, from one school and boarding school to another. In 2000, a television report on graffiti made him want to pick up a spray can. He first signed as “100REMOR” and never stopped painting. At 16, he left the school system. He later went to Cork, Ireland, to train at a golf academy. There he learned patience, consistency and self-control. These qualities would later mark his painting.

Back in France in 2007, he enrolled in a visual communication school near Paris. He then trained as a graphic designer. His series of bookmarks against discrimination won an international competition. He also met other graffiti writers and adopted the name “Renkar,” soon shortened to “Renk.” On walls, trains and vacant lots, he developed a virtuoso command of spray paint.

The Revelation of the Sky

From 2010 onwards, painting became his sole activity. In 2011, a trip to the Sinai desert in Egypt came as a revelation. Faced with the vast sky and the desert light, he devoted himself fully to canvas. Yet Renk kept the tool and gesture of graffiti. He paints with spray cans, and his own tag becomes the very material of his paintings.

His favorite motif is the sky. The word “Renk” is repeated tirelessly, in varying sizes and colors. It eventually merges into the whole and disappears. From this accumulation emerge clouds, dawns and twilights. Colors fade into one another in an almost musical harmony. The signature is the ultimate gesture of self-assertion. Here, however, it dissolves into the landscape: writing becomes light. Graffiti thus joins the long history of sky painting.

Voyages sur le motif

From 2020, he undertook a series of journeys to paint sur le motif, mainly in Brittany. He painted at Mont-Saint-Michel, Belle-Île, Dinard, the Île de Bréhat and the Crozon peninsula. He thus works outdoors, without sketches, facing the landscape, in the tradition of the Impressionists.

Renk and Galerie Enrico Navarra

In 2023, Galerie Enrico Navarra presented this work in Voyages sur le motif. The exhibition was held at Galerie 75 Faubourg in Paris, then at Villa Navarra in Le Muy. Paper Cloud followed at Galerie 75 Faubourg (2023–2024) and, in 2025, The Night at 60 White Street in New York. That same year, the Art Museum of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in Chongqing presented Thousand Skies, From Graffiti to Painting. It brought together more than eighty works made between 2014 and 2024.