Author
Street art
Girl with Balloon
Banksy's Girl with Balloon — a figure reaching for an escaping red heart-balloon: the most famous image in street art, which once self-destructed live at auction.
Its value lies in joining a simple, moving image with a radical gesture: Banksy turned the sale of art into the artwork itself.
Highlights
Surprising facts & legends
Short but striking stories around the work — the things that make it come alive.
Interesting facts
The story around the work
Interesting facts & legends
- In 2018 the picture partly self-destructed via a shredder hidden in the frame, right after selling at Sotheby's.
- The shredded version was renamed 'Love is in the Bin' and three years later sold for £18.5m, many times more.
- Polls have named Girl with Balloon Britain's favourite work of art.
- Banksy reworked the image several times — including with a Syrian refugee girl for charity.
- Banksy's identity has never been officially revealed.
Estimated value
What it is worth today
The shredded version, renamed Love Is in the Bin, sold for about £18.5 million in 2021 — many times what it fetched seconds before it self-destructed.
More details Open the extended reading, official sources, and visual context around the work
Historical context
Girl with Balloon in its era
Banksy first stencilled Girl with Balloon on a wall in London's East End around 2002. The girl reaches toward a heart-shaped balloon drifting away — an image of hope and loss.
Path to recognition
How the work became widely known
In 2018, a framed version slid down and half-shredded itself through a hidden shredder seconds after selling at Sotheby's for over a million pounds. The stunt turned the work into legend.
Value
Why the work matters today
Its value lies in joining a simple, moving image with a radical gesture: Banksy turned the sale of art into the artwork itself.
Connections and legacy
How to read the work more broadly
The shredded version was renamed 'Love is in the Bin' — and its value multiplied. The work became a symbol of the debate about value, the market and rebellion in art.
Official sources
Where to verify the institutional context
- Official institution page Official Banksy site
Visual context
Related images and nearby entry points
What to look at
Three entry points into the work
Even a very famous artwork opens more fully when the viewer knows where to look for tension, meaning, and compositional focus.
- Follow the escaping red heart — the only spot of colour.
- Recall the shredder video: the gesture matters more than the image.
- Note the plain stencil — street art at its core.
Continue the exhibition
A few more works nearby by era, energy, or visual logic
This makes it easier to move through art not as a list of names, but as a connected system of images, themes, and historical gestures.
