Jeff Koons work Balloon Venus Dolni Vestonice (Yellow) acquired by National Gallery of Australia

The NGA gift forms part of Koons’s early 2000s Antiquity series, which gives a modern and shiny twist to art history. The original Venus of Dolni Vestonice is one of the oldest-known sculptures and earliest representations of the human body, dating back 30,000 years to the Czech Republic.

Koons created multiple versions of Balloon Venus in yellow, red, magenta, green and blue. Each is a cousin to Koons’s iconic work Balloon Dog, which caused a sensation in 2013 when it sold at Christie’s for $89 million, setting a record auction price for an artwork by a living artist at the time.

Balloon Venus Dolni Vestonice (Yellow) had been on loan from Sydney collectors Steven and Kylie Shelley since 2018, the couple gifting the work to the gallery late 2024 with the wish that it be displayed for the enjoyment of the public.

Wednesday’s official unveiling was delayed to coincide with the visit of Koons to the gallery as part of its American Friends of the National Gallery’s visiting creatives program. American painter and sculptor Jeffrey Gibson will follow this year.

“Our collection has a very strong American base with the abstract expressionists, and pop artists and modernists with major works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella and Robert Rauschenberg,” Mitzevich said.

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“It’s quite curious that Jeff Koons was not in our collection, and so I always thought of that as a gap. I borrowed the Jeff Koons about seven years ago because it is in an Australian collection, and I’d been gently suggesting to Steven and Kylie Shelley that it would be a welcome addition to the collection … after six years of having the work on loan, we are so thrilled for them to have made the donation. ”

For those who might argue that Koons’ balloon artwork is over-simplified and easily replicable, Mitzevich has a ready answer.

“It’s three metres high, made of mirror finished stainless steel with a significant patina on it that emulates a balloon but is the antithesis of a balloon,” he said.

“The creativity of normal day life like a little balloon sculpture is elevated in Jeff’s work. He takes things that we might dismiss as being kitsch or trivial and, with the magic of his materials and scale and the way he connects it to history, he makes works that add to the contribution of art in the 21st century.”

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The gift is the latest in large commissions by the national gallery under the leadership of Mitzevich and follows the installation of the $14 million sculpture, Ouroboros, by Lindy Lee, to celebrate its 40th birthday.

In December 2023, the gallery unveiled one of its most expensive and contentious art commissions – an animatronic sculpture by Los Angeles artist Jordon Wolfson.

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