The Prado Museum recently collaborated on a project with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in conjunction with the 2019 UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid. Awareness of this issue is also growing within the museum context, where the paintings in the institution’s collection have been digitally modified to reflect a world destroyed by inaction.

The project has been christened “+ 1.5ºC Lo Cambia Todo”, which in Spanish means “+ 1.5ºC changes everything”. The paintings of three Spanish artists (Francisco de Goya, Diego Velázquez and Joaquín Sorolla) and a Flemish Renaissance painter (Joachim Patinir) were considered the most relevant to the project by art experts. To effectively spread the message, the modified works were placed on billboards in Madrid and found shared online under the hashtag #LoCambiaTodo.

For the Museum, this project represents an opportunity to continue placing art and its values at the service of society. The symbolic value of the masterpieces and the impressive artistic recreation that we present with WWF is an excellent way to transmit to everyone and especially to the young generations what is really at stake in this fight against climate change.

Urgent problems such as rising sea levels, desertification and the issue of refugees turn the works of great European painters into an advertising campaign to save the environment.