Collection

  • Mirosław Bałka, A Boy and an Eagle, 1988
  • Mirosław Bałka, A Boy and an Eagle, 1988
  • Mirosław Bałka, A Boy and an Eagle, 1988
  • Mirosław Bałka, A Boy and an Eagle, 1988

    photo Bartosz Stawiarski
  • Mirosław Bałka, A Boy and an Eagle, 1988

    "In the near future" fot. Karol Kaczorowski

Boy and an Eagle is one of the key sculptures from the tumultuous turn of the 1980s and 1990s, when new forms of representation emerged in Polish art as a response to the challenges of that time of political transition (just before the eruption of so-called “critical art”). This sculpture alludes to the myth of Zeus in the form of an eagle, tempting the young Ganymede. In the catalogue for the Sculptures in the Garden exhibition in 1988 (when Boy and an Eagle was first shown), the artist included two texts which altered and extended the interpretations of the work: an extract from prose by William S. Burroughs, and a patriotic poem from 1900, A Polish Child’s Confession of Faith (beginning with the words: „Who are you? A little Pole…"). Bałka thus introduced Polish art discourse to the theme of tension between the private and the public, the intimate and the political. 

Year: 1988
Medium: stone, zinc metal plate, water pump, plastic
Format: a boy - 160 x 37 x 45 cm, an eagle - 78 x 28 x 55, a pool - 256,3 x 91,5 x 13 cm

Acquisition: deposit
Ownership form: deposit
Source: Fundacja EGIT
Index: MSN: 413-1/2008
Acquisition date:

See also

Other Works From That Artist