A French Street Artist Has Been Secretly Painting City Bollards to Look Like LEGO Heads Since 2014

Walk down certain streets in France and you might notice something unusual about the bollards. The squat metal posts — designed to stop cars from parking on pavements — have been transformed into bright yellow LEGO-like characters, complete with angry one-eyed faces.

Meet Le CyKlop

The artist behind them is Le CyKlop (real name Olivier D'Hondt), a French street artist born in Le Havre in 1968. His journey started one winter night in 2007 in Paris's 11th arrondissement, when he painted his first one-eyed character onto an anti-parking bollard.

"It was a kind of game," Le CyKlop has said. "I imagined a stencil that gave the impression that the bollard was being painted: all I had to do was stick it on, add a bit of white and a stroke of paint on the eye stencil. Only two minutes and it was done."

The Angry L'éGO Series

Around 2014, Le CyKlop began his most recognisable series: Angry L'éGO. The concept is simple but brilliant — paint the top of each bollard bright yellow and add expressive LEGO minifigure-style faces. Each character has a different expression: angry, surprised, sad, piratical. The dripping yellow paint adds to the playful, slightly rebellious aesthetic.

Speed was essential. The work "was not really allowed or tolerated," so Le CyKlop developed custom stencils that let him transform a bollard in about two minutes.

From Guerrilla Art to City Commissions

What started as unauthorised nighttime art has become something more. Le CyKlop's work became so popular that cities began officially commissioning him. The city of Pantin hired him to transform their bollards, and his pieces now appear in cities across France and beyond.

His mission, as he puts it, is to "bring fantasy back to our streets" — turning the most mundane pieces of urban infrastructure into characters that make people smile on their way to work.