Environmental activists vandalized one of Diego Velázquez's most famous paintings with a hammer on Monday in the British capital's world-famous fine art collection, the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square.
Two young activists wearing t-shirts of the environmental protection group Just Stop Oil broke the protective glass of the 17th-century Spanish master Venus with Mirror in several places. The police detained both of them on suspicion of malicious damage.
In 1914, Mary Richardson, a former suffragette activist fighting for women's suffrage, tore open the same painting with a meat cleaver.
According to Just Stop Oil's statement on Monday evening, politics is failing everyone in the same way it failed women in 1914, and in this situation, action is not needed anymore, but action.
According to the statement, the newly extracted crude oil and natural gas will cause the death of millions, and this must be stopped "if we love art, life and our families".
Last October, two other members of the movement poured canned tomato soup on one of Vincent van Gogh's most famous paintings, Sunflowers, also in the National Gallery in London, and then glued their palms to the wall. According to the video recorded at the scene, one of them shouted that
"What is worth more? Art or life? Are you more concerned about protecting a painting than human life or the planet?”
The frame of the Van Gogh painting suffered minor damage, but the work, which was also protected by a sheet of glass, remained intact.
The National Gallery in London, founded in 1824, is one of the world's largest public collections of fine arts, with almost 2,500 paintings on display in its permanent exhibitions. The gallery, which can be visited for free, is visited by more than four million people every year.
At the same time as the latest incident in the gallery on Monday, Just Stop Oil activists held a traffic-slowing march in nearby Whitehall, the main street of London's government district.
According to Scotland Yard's information on Monday evening, the police detained about a hundred of the participants of the unannounced demonstration.
Just Stop Oil regularly holds demonstrations in London, largely blocking roads, in protest against the extraction and use of fossil fuels.
MTI
Cover image: In an image provided by environmental protection group Just Stop Oil, two climate activists from the organization stand in front of Spanish master Diego Velázquez's painting Venus with a Mirror after hitting the glass protecting the painting with a small hammer at the National Gallery in London on November 6, 2023. (Photo: MTI/AP/Just Stop Oil)
