Man hits statue of pedophile artist with hammer at BBC radio for 4 hours

As a sign of protest against the work of an acquaintance pedophile artist, a man had climbed a ladder in front of his radio house BBC and for four hours he struggled to destroy, striking with a hammer a controversial sculpture. The incident happened early on the afternoon of Wednesday 12/1, when the man arrived at the building and used a ladder to reach the 3-meter-high sculpture in front of him.

The statue Called “Prospero and Ariel”, it is the work of sculptor and printer Eric Gill, and has received strong reactions from British citizens demanding that it be removed from the iconic building because of the heinous acts of the man who designed it.

The shocking revelation that the famous British sculptor had sexually abused his two eldest daughters and his dog occurred several years after his death in 1940 and, as expected, changed the way his works are treated forever.

The police watched him without being able to intervene

Videos and photos published by the British media show the man hitting the sculpture with a hammer, removing large parts of it, while the police try to persuade him to stop.

Finally, after many hours, the Metropolitan Police of London mobilized a raised platform of the Fire Brigade to take the man down from the building. The activist was then arrested for vandalism, while in the last hours the owners of the building are trying to assess the damage caused.

The sculpture “Prospero and Ariel”, which is naturally inspired by Shakespeare’s “Storm”, is located in a prominent position in the building of the British network Radio House, in Portland Place. It was placed in the building in 1933 and depicts the character of the magician Prospero from the play “Bardos” to send the good spirit Ariel out into the world. “It was then thought that Ariel, as the spirit of the air, was a fitting symbol for the new mystery of radio,” the BBC reported on its website.

What’s Gill’s relationship with the BBC

Eric Gill at the time of his death in 1940, was one of the most respected artists of the 20th century. However, the publication of his diaries in 1989 revealed that he systematically abused Betty and Petra’s daughters, as well as the family dog. Organizations fighting sexual harassment have been calling for the statue to be removed from the BBC building for many years.

The Prospero and Ariel sculpture is not Gill’s only creation at the BBC headquarters. There is another statue in the reception area, the “Sower”, while Gill participated in the reliefs of “Ariel” in the building.

In 1990, the BBC adopted the iconic Gill Sans font that Gill created in 1927. The network used this font for its brand and many of its television graphics. The BBC logo was one of the longest running in the world and has only recently changed.