Abstract
The author draws attention to visual artworks of the 1980s and 1990s in which artists, drawing upon diverse trends, disciplines and artistic generations, applied materials directly from the surrounding environment in pieces called eco-installations. The text attempts to explain certain creative postures and artistic decisions in the context of our advanced civilization—its achievements and threats alike. The eco-installations—subtle, subdued, gentle, fragile, fleeting, whose finite existence (like that of living organisms doomed to pass away) reflects the artists' own decisions—are in urgent need of identification, analysis and documentation. Among artists recognized in international circles, the author situates two Polish artists perhaps less well known than their colleagues.