Last-ditch bid to save Oslo building with Picasso murals

OSLO: Face masks are rare and social distances vary but the human chain spreads out, braving the risk of infection, as activists in Oslo make a last-ditch bid to save a building adorned with artwork designed by Spanish master painter Pablo Picasso.

Damaged in rightwing extremist Anders Behring Breivik´s July 2011 attacks, the “Y Block”, a government building complex named for its shape and completed in 1969, is due to be demolished any day now.

On its grey cement walls are two Picasso drawings, sandblasted by Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar, who collaborated with the Spaniard. On the facade facing the street, “The Fishermen” depicts three men hauling their oversized catch on board their boat. In the lobby, “The Seagull” shows the bird, its wings spread wide, devouring a fish. Etched in the Spanish painter´s childlike strokes, the two works will be cut out and relocated to new government buildings due to be built in the central Oslo neighbourhood. But not everyone is okay with that plan. “We´re going to be kicking ourselves for years,” blasts Erik Lie, one of the 200 or so Norwegians who have come to protest against the demolition on this freezing May morning, one link in the human chain in front of the building. “I hope it´s not too late,” he says, his orange woolly hat reading “Let Y Stand”, before adding fatalistically: “But this will probably be a pile of rubble soon.

Because of the new coronavirus, protesters are linked by metre-long ribbons in a bid to keep them at a safe distance from one another. Energised by their despair, they still harbour dreams of ripping the building from the bulldozers´ claws.