La fille au ballon

Girl with Balloon

I would like to present you a work of street art called “Girl with Balloon” .

This work was made by Banksy, it’s an anonymous street artist, we know that he was born in 1974 in england .

He is a graffiti artist, a painter, a director and a sculpture.

He is the most famous street artist in the year 2000.

He has made works all over the world (syria, london ...).

It was stencilled in 2002, in London precisely on the Waterloo bridge at South Bank.

It is a graffiti that represents a little girl in a black dress, who reaches out to a red balloon in the shape of a heart that flies away, just to the right of this girl is written “There is always hope” .

The work is made up of three colors: red, black and white, the red; the blood/ the black; the war/ the white; the hope.

This work was made in commemoration to the Syrians, in support of the war decimating their population.

In March 2014, for the third anniversary of the conflict in Syria, Banksy revisited his work which he published on his website. He veils the little girl to illustrate a Syrian refugee and adds the hashtag #WithSyria, a campaign to support Syrian children.

Girl with Balloon (also, Balloon Girl or Girl and Balloon) is a 2002-started London series of stencil murals by the graffiti artist Banksy, depicting a young girl with her hand extended toward a red heart-shaped balloon carried away by the wind. The first work was on Waterloo Bridge, and other murals were around London, though none remain there. Banksy has several times used variants of this design to support social campaigns: in 2005 about the West Bank barrier, in 2014 about the Syrian refugee crisis, and also about the 2017 UK election. A 2017 Samsung poll ranked Girl with Balloon as the United Kingdom's number one favourite artwork.

In 2018, a framed copy of the work spontaneously shredded during an auction, by way of a mechanical device Banksy had hidden in the frame. Banksy authenticated he was responsible for the shredding and gave the altered piece a new name, Love is in the Bin. Sotheby said it was "the first work in history ever created during a live auction."

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