Climate protesters from Extinction Revolt stick themselves to Goya’s paintings “Las maja naked” and “La maja ropa” to alert concerning the climate emergency in Madrid, Spain November 5, 2022 on this picture obtained from social media.
Futurovegetal | Futurovegetal Via Reuters
Climate activists glued themselves to the frames of two world-famous paintings by Spanish master Francisco de Goya in Madrid’s Prado museum on Saturday, the newest in a string of protests targeting artworks across Europe.
A person and a girl attached themselves to Goya’s “La Maja Vestida” (The Clothed Maja) and his “La Maja Desnuda” (The Naked Maja), and painted “+1.5 C” on the wall between the 2 works, video footage showed.
Campaign group Futuro Vegetal said its members carried out the protest.
“Last week the UN recognised the impossibility of keeping us below the limit of 1.5 Celsius (agreed on the 2016 Paris climate agreement). We’d like change now,” it wrote on Twitter.
Groups of climate activists have mounted a series of comparable protest in recent weeks within the build-up to next week’s COP27 climate change conference in Egypt.
Protesters tried to connect themselves to the glass covering Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” in The Hague and others threw soup over Van Gogh’s “The Sower” in Rome and certainly one of his Sunflowers paintings in London. Each of those works were also covered.
The Prado said its paintings had not been damaged, but staff would need to repair the wall between the 2 works which were created on the turn of the 18th and nineteenth centuries.
“We condemn the usage of the museum as a spot to make a political protest of any kind,” the gallery added.
Police said two people had been arrested.
