In 2003, Banksy created Kids on Guns, a spray-paint on canvas work. Thanks to the technique used, although part of a limited series, the piece can be considered truly unique.
The image shows two stylized children: a boy holding a teddy bear and a girl with a red heart-shaped balloon. They stand atop a mountain of weapons—rifles, guns, bombs—a pyramid of violence. It presents a powerful contrast between childhood innocence and the horrors of war. The boy comforts the girl by placing a hand on her shoulder, a gesture of solidarity and hope emerging from the heart of destruction. The red balloon can be seen as a symbol of the fragility of love, destined to burst in a violent world.
The composition echoes the pyramidal structure of Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, embodying the tension between oppression and the aspiration for freedom.
In 2013, during his Better Out Than In residency in New York, Banksy sold editions of Kids on Guns at a pop-up stall for only $60, revealing the paradox between the symbolic value of the work and the art market. Today, Kids on Guns is exhibited as tangible evidence of Banksy’s poetic approach: the delicacy of childhood surviving atop a pile of arms, art that challenges the powerful while comforting the most vulnerable.
