The Leopold Museum in Vienna said on Tuesday that an expertise was underway to find out if the painting “Life and Death”, protected by glass, had been damaged.
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The famous painting Life and death by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt was sprayed with a black liquid on Tuesday, November 15, by climate activists, announced the Leopold Museum in Vienna. “The restorers are at work to determine if the painting, protected by ice, has been damaged”said a spokesperson for the institution.
The group Letzte Generation (Last Generation), which brings together German and Austrian activists, claimed responsibility for the action by broadcasting images. This group is defined as “the first generation to feel the onset of climate collapse – and the last to still be able to stop it”.
️EILT: Klimt’s “Tod und Leben” im Leopold Museum mit Öl überschüttet️
Menschen der Letzten Generation haben heute im Leopold Museum das Klimt-Gemälde “Tod und Leben” mit Öl überschüttet. Neue Öl- und Gasbohrungen sind ein Todesurteil für die Menschheit. pic.twitter.com/4QKAklB9Af
— Letzte Generation Austria (@letztegenAT) November 15, 2022
On the video, we see two men vandalizing the work, one sticking his hand to the glass, before being neutralized by an employee. “Stop the destruction (of humanity) by fossil fuels. We are rushing into climate hell”, they shouted. Entrance to the museum was free on Tuesday as part of a day sponsored by the Austrian oil group OMV.
Faced with the proliferation of these environmental actions, nearly a hundred international museums, including the Louvre in Paris, declared themselves, last week, “deeply shocked by (the) reckless endangerment” of these works “irreplaceable”.