Dimensions: 160 x 256.3 x 91.5 cm (whole)
160 x 37 x 45 cm (boy)
78 x 28 x 55 cm (eagle)
256.3 x 91.5 x 13 cm (pool)
Origin
purchased directly from the artist
collection of the Egit Foundation, Warsaw
Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (deposit)
Exhibited
"Sculpture in the Garden", SARP, Warsaw, 19-29.09.1988
"Fragment of the collection 3. From the collection of the Zachęta Gallery", Zachęta Gallery of Contemporary Art, Warsaw, 4.09-11.10.1998
"Polyptyk" (within the framework of the 7th Biennial "Facing Values"), BWA Gallery of Contemporary Art, Katowice, 14.12.1998-31.01.1999
"Potential. Contemporary art collections for the museum...", Metropolitan building, Warsaw, 14-29.05.2005
"Art More Precious Than Gold. Showing the first purchases, gifts and deposits to the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw", Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Warsaw, 6.12.2008-24.01.2009
"In the Heart of the Country. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw", Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Warsaw, 14.05.2013-6.01.2014
"In the Near Future. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw", Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Warsaw, 14.02-31.08.2014
"Non-Permanent Exhibition. Collection of the MSN", Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Warsaw, 21.02-5.10.2025
Literature
Rzeźba w ogrodzie, exhibition catalog, SARP, Warsaw 1988, nlb. (il.)
Fragment of a Collection 3, exhibition catalog in the form of postcards, Zachęta Gallery of Contemporary Art, Warsaw 1998, nlb. (il.)
Polyptych. VII Biennale Against Values, exhibition catalog, BWA Gallery of Contemporary Art, Katowice 1998 (il.)
In the Heart of the Country. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, exhibition catalog, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, ed. Katarzyna Szotkowska-Beylin, Warsaw 2013, p. 42.
All at once. The first 18 years of the MSN, ed. Katarzyna Szotkowska-Beylin, Warsaw 2023, p. 122 (ill. no. 15)
MSN Collections. A Guide, edited by Jagna Lewandowska, Warsaw 2025, p. 17 (il. 1.1)
The new museum and the unstable canon. 4 x MSN collection, exhibition catalog, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, ed. Joanna Mytkowska, Katarzyna Szotkowska-Beylin, Warsaw 2025, pp. 27-28 (mentioned), 31 (index)
Anda Rottenberg, Mirosław Bałka, Cosmos. Conversations-Texts-Friendship. Anda Rottenberg, Mirosław Bałka, Warsaw 2025, pp. 53, 55 (ill.), 48-55, 94-95 (mentioned)
Biography
Graduated from the sculpture department of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in 1985. In the 1980s, he was the author of figurative sculptures associated with the current of Neo-Expressionism. Since the early 1990s, he has been creating minimalist sculptural compositions using simple materials such as raw stone, wood, salt, ash and organic substances. The main theme of Bałka's sculptures and compositions is the human body and its accompanying "everyday" objects and substances, as well as the memory associated with the body. There are allusions to transience in his work, and the subject of the Holocaust is also important.
