Climate Activist Throws Bright Pink Paint on Glass Covering Picasso Painting in Montreal The stunt is part of an environmental organization’s efforts to draw attention to the dangerous wildfires spreading through Canada The activist threw paint on Pablo Picasso’s L'hétaïre (1901). Last Generation Canada A climate activist threw pink paint at Pablo Picasso’s L’hétaïre (1901) at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts last week. The 21-year-old man, identified as Marcel, is a member of Last Generation Canada, an environmental organization that works to combat climate change. After splashing Picasso’s portrait with the paint, Marcel made a speech in French to the gallery, which was captured on video and posted on social media by Last Generation Canada. “There are more than 200 wildfires in Canada at this moment, 83 of which are not protected [and] which are out of control,” he said. “There are too many problems here. There are people who are dying. … If Canada doesn’t do much, soon we will all be dying.” Quick fact: Picasso’s blue period Pablo Picasso created L’hétaïre during his famous “blue period,” when the artist painted monochromatic artworks in shades of blue and blue-green. Canada is in the midst of its wildfire season, which occurs between April and October. The blazes have consumed almost nine million acres across four Canadian provinces, report the New York Times’ Nasuna Stuart-Ulin and Vjosa Isai. This season is a particularly bad one. In early June, satellite data revealed that the number of fire hotspots was four times higher than normal, per the Associated Press’ M.K. Wildeman. Marcel’s stunt is part of a three-week “action phase” by Last Generation Canada, according to a statement from the organization. The group is demanding that the Canadian government form a “Climate Disaster Protection Agency” to aid those “whose homes, communities, lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by extreme weather, including wildfires worsened by the burning of fossil fuels.” Picasso’s L’hétaïre, which was on loan from the Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin, Italy, was covered by a layer of protective glass, and the pink paint caused no visible damage, according to a statement from the museum. Two museum security guards confronted Marcel and turned him over to the Montreal police. Officials tell Hyperallergic’s Maya Pontone that Marcel has been released from custody and will later appear in court. “It is most unfortunate that this act carried out in the name of environmental activism targeted a work belonging to our global cultural heritage and under safekeeping for the benefit of future generations,” Stéphane Aquin, the director of the museum, says in the statement. “Museums and artists alike are allies in the fight for a better world.” In recent years, damaging the glass protecting famous artworks has become a popular method of protest among some climate change groups. However, one of the best-known groups, a British organization called Just Stop Oil, announced in March that it would start winding down such tactics after the United Kingdom decided to stop issuing new oil and gas licenses. “We value paint strokes and color composition over life itself,” Marcel says in the statement from Last Generation Canada. “A lot more resources have been put in place to secure and protect this artwork than to protect living, breathing people.” The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts was displaying L’hétaïre as part of the exhibition “Berthe Weill, Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-Garde,” focused on the 20th-century French gallery-owner who exhibited Picasso’s early work. After the June 19 incident, the museum was closed for a short period before reopening later that day. L’hétaïre has not yet returned to the gallery. “I am not attacking art, nor am I destroying it. I am protecting it,” says Marcel in a social media post by Last Generation Canada. “Art, at its core, is depictions of life. It is by the living, for the living. There is no art on a dead planet.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

The stunt is part of an environmental organization's efforts to draw attention to the dangerous wildfires spreading through Canada