On Sunday, two environmentalists threw mashed potatoes at a Monet painting in a Potsdam, Germany, museum that was valued millions of euros.
According to a video shared on social media, the activists from Letzte Generation spray-painted Oscar-Claude Monet’s 130-year-old painting “Les Meules” with yellow-tinged mush before adhering to the wall of the Museum Barberini.
Der Tagesspeigel reports that after securing her hand to the wall, protester Mirjam Herrmann yelled, “People are starving, people are freezing, people are dying. We are in a climate catastrophe. Science says we won’t be able to feed our families by 2050. This painting will be worth nothing if we have to fight over food.”
Earlier on Sunday, two protesters from the “Just Stop Oil” movement in London damaged a $85 million Vincent Van Gogh painting named “Sunflowers” with a can of Heinz tomato soup.
The frames of an early replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and John Constable’s “The Hay Wain” at the National Gallery were also covered in adhesive by Just Stop Oil protesters.
The hands of the demonstrators could be readily removed from the wall, a museum official told the media source.
Left-leaning elected politicians in Potsdam and Brandenburg, Germany, denounced the deed.
“The fight against the climate crisis is not strengthened by attacks on famous paintings. On the contrary, we need broad social consensus,” Brandenburg Green Party Leader Ursula Nonnemacher posted on Twitter.
