It first appeared on the West Bank Wall as Banksy’s most iconic anti-war mural. The work served as a manifesto against the construction of the Israeli separation barrier.

In the work, a masked protester drawn in black-and-white stencil technique wears a backwards baseball cap and a bandana covering his face. With an angry posture he throws a bouquet of flowers as if hurling a Molotov cocktail. The flowers are in vivid colours, the composition is dynamic and tense: the pose of violence is distorted by an object of peace.

Banksy inverts images from the 1960s Vietnam protests. He transforms the protester into a figure throwing flowers instead of a Molotov cocktail.

He questions the absurdity of war and the power of non-violent resistance; while the protester throws flowers, he mocks the state’s claim to ‘security’. The flowers symbolise the superiority of hope and peace over violence. On the West Bank Wall, it emphasises civil disobedience against separation and oppression. By bringing the 1960s Flower Power movement into the present, the work supports calls for nuclear disarmament and protests against the Iraq War.

Banksy uses stencil technique with minimalist contrast and dynamic composition. The tension between the protester’s strained posture and the soft form of the flowers intensifies the visual irony. Critics describe the work as ‘the iconic symbol of non-violent protest’; The Guardian praised it as ‘a satire that perfectly captures the absurdity of war’.

The mural has been recreated in many versions, appeared on a garage wall in London but was quickly removed. It was produced as a print edition in 2003. In 2021 the canvas version sold for $12.9 million at Sotheby’s. Banksy used the image for the cover of his book Wall and Piece and released it as an NFT.

Can a protester throwing flowers defeat violence?