Photo: Pistol with Knotted Barrel Sculpture, United Nations. Credit: Photo by Maria Lysenko / Unsplash.

Pistol with Knotted Barrel

New York, N.Y. Swedish artist Non-Violence Sculpture made this sculpture after the murder of John Lennon, with whom Reuterswärd was acquainted. When learning of the murder he stayed up all night to work on the piece, inspired by the idea of making a knot on the firearm the murderer Mark David Chapman had used. Lennon was assassinated at the Dakota on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on December 8, 1980.

The oversized public version of the piece was planned for John Lennon’s memorial Strawberry Fields in Central Park. This sculpture was made 1984, but when the memorial was opened in 1985 Reuterswärd opted not to have it placed there, citing fears it would be stolen.

In 1988, the government of  Luxembourg bought and donated it to the United Nations. The sculpture was moved right outside of the headquarters of the U.N. Here it was interpreted not only a memorial for John Lennon, but as a symbol against violence and war anywhere in the world.

Following the unveiling of the original sculpture, Reuterswärd did a range of replicas of Non Violence for places around the world, numbering about thirty sculptures. About half of these are in Sweden. Aside from the public pieces, Reuterswärd made plenty of variations of the sculpture in smaller or life sized scale.

Since 1993, the sculpture has been the symbol of The Non-Violence Project (NVPF), a nonprofit organization that promotes social change through violence-prevention education programs. In 2011, Ringo Starr unveiled his own brightly colored version of The Knotted Gun that he created. Later, more color versions were made by Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono and other celebrities.

United Nation’s Non-Violence Sculpture (June 25, 2023)