Why is Love Hurts important?

With so few signed Love Hurts prints out there, this is one of the rarest Banksy editions ever produced - and one of the works most coveted by collectors.

How do I buy Love Hurts?

One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways of buying work by Banksy is by using us to reach a seller. MyArtBroker is a curated site, meaning we feature artists that our collectors say they want. You can find Banksy art for sale here. You’ll need to create a free account to buy or sell with us.

How can I sell my Love Hurts print?

If you're looking to sell art by Banksy, click the link and we can help. We employ a number of techniques and practices in order to give a realistic and achievable valuation on any art listed on myartbroker.com. We analyse the demand for the work in question, take into consideration previous sales and auction valuations, we assess the current gallery valuation and monitor the current deals taking place via MyArtBroker every day. We regularly advise sellers on a price bracket for their artwork completely free of charge.

Love Hurts by Banksy Background & Meaning

Meaning & Analysis

Love Hurts, or Barbed Wire Heart Balloon is one of just 16 prints released by Banksy in 2012. This edition was released for an exclusive selection of the artist's friends and was never made available to the public. Chris Martin, lead singer of Coldplay, is rumoured to own an original Love Hurts canvas.

Over the course of his career, Banksy has reworked the visual motif of the Love Hurts balloon in several different works. In 2017, the image was installed as a painting in the Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem, Palestine - a hotel-come-gallery overlooking the Israeli West Bank Barrier wall, which houses a permanent exhibition of Banksy’s works. A similar balloon was also painted on the streets of Brooklyn during Banksy's New York residency in 2013; titled Better Out Than In, it was later defaced by rival graffiti artist, Omar NYC.

The Love Hurts Banksy print is deceptively simple in its composition, featuring a red heart-shaped Mylar balloon set against a light blue monochromatic background. Appearing to have escaped its owner, the wounded balloon, indicated by the pair of plasters on the top right, is now trapped in a barbed wire fence.

Banksy himself has explained that Love Hurts ‘is obviously an iconic representation of the battle to survive a broken heart. It’s an uplifting visual poem to that most fragile of human emotions that seem to move within us as if on a soft breeze’.

Love, or the lack of it, is a theme that has preoccupied Banksy throughout his career, and in such works as Love is in the Air (later adapted as a screen print), which depicts a young man throwing a bunch of flowers like a grenade. Appropriating the iconography of Palestinian resistance, the work is meant to signify the act of spreading love. The iconic work Love Rat was also intended as a public message of love.

With so few signed Love Hurts prints out there, this is one of the rarest Banksy editions ever produced - and one of the works most coveted by collectors.
Why we love Love Hurts… "As suggested by its title, this work evokes the power of love to inflict hurt and anguish as well as joy and pleasure. The fragility and vulnerability of human emotion is represented in the allegory of the balloon, which can be easily pierced and deflated. Conversely, the balloon also possesses the innate desire to break free and rise above its constraints. Whilst at first glance the work appears straightforward, it in fact carries a poignant message. A double edged sword, Banksy demonstrates both the power of love as well as its agonising ability to cause pain and suffering." - Joe Syer
If you're looking to sell art by Banksy, click the link and we can help. We employ a number of techniques and practices in order to give a realistic and achievable valuation on any art listed on myartbroker.com. We analyse the demand for the work in question, take into consideration previous sales and auction valuations, we assess the current gallery valuation and monitor the current deals taking place via MyArtBroker every day. We regularly advise sellers on a price bracket for their artwork completely free of charge.