The exhibition seeks to remove "anthropocentric" bias from the picture Courtesy of M Cantor and Yvon Lambert Paris, New York

The explosion of ecological and animal rights movements in the 1960s led to the formulation of radically new artistic approaches to the animal world. The works on display in “All Creatures Great and Small” are characterized by a contemporary take on these pioneering concepts.

The central purpose of the exhibition is to overturn the dogma of “anthropocentrism,” which places the human at the center of the world, a privileged species set apart from the milieu of nature. In an attempt to eliminate this artificial distance between humankind and the animal world, Polish and international artists place animals at the heart of their work.

From a still-life scene of a wolf observing a deer (by artist Mircea Cantor, pictured above) to a polyurethane resin cast of a moosehead crowned with a frozen antler (by Eric Swenson), the art on display explores a diverse range of visual techniques.

“All Creatures Great and Small” is on show at the Zachęta National Gallery in Warsaw through February 21.

For more information, log on to www.zacheta.art.pl