Two people have been arrested after a painting by Pablo Picasso hanging in the National Gallery, London, was briefly covered by protestors with a photograph of a Gazan mother and child. The incident took place shortly before 12pm on 9 October, when two supporters of the campaign group Youth Demand entered room 43 at the gallery and placed the image over Picasso’s Motherhood (La Maternité) (1901).
In footage shared by The London Standard, a member of the group, which calls for the UK to implement a two-way arms embargo on Israel, can be seen being detained by a gallery worker. Another activist was also filmed sitting beneath the painting, having poured red paint across the gallery’s floor. A National Gallery spokesperson has since confirmed that the work was not damaged.
A police spokeswoman said: “Police were called to the National Gallery, Westminster, following reports that Youth Demand activists were trying to cause damage to a painting. Officers arrested two people on suspicion of criminal damage, both of which are in custody. There was no damage reported. The room in the gallery remains closed whilst enquiries are ongoing.”
Jai Halai, a 23-year-old NHS worker from London who took part in the anti-arms sales protest said: “I’m taking action with Youth Demand because at this point it’s been over one year of seeing my colleagues in the healthcare field decimated. Decimated by bombs, by bullets and by having to operate, with no medical equipment, on starved children.
“Direct action is what gave us our rights and is the only way to move us towards proper justice. Civil resistance is our duty as young people: to defend those without a voice today and to defend our futures."
The photograph used to cover the Picasso work was taken by the Palestinian journalist Ali Jadallah and shows a distressed and bloodied pair, coated in debris. The image’s caption reads: “A mom holds [her] injured child after an Israeli attack, as Israeli airstrikes continue on twelfth day, at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.”
Malachi Rosenfeld, a 21-year-old student who also took part in the protest, said: “I’m taking action because as a Jew, I feel like it’s my duty to call out the genocide being committed in Gaza. I want the world to know this isn’t in the Jewish name and I want to see a free Palestine.”
The incident comes just over a year on from the 7 October Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, which killed approximately 1,200 people. The number of Palestinians killed in Gaza in the months since is now reportedly over 41,000.
It also follows a spate of painting-focused protests in recent months, including two incidents in which soup was thrown over Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, and one in which activists glued themselves to the frame of J.M.W. Turner’s Tomson’s Aeolian Harp.