15 Great contemporary artists deeply committed to nature preservation and not only greenwashing

"Greenwashing" has been a great opportunity for artists to promote themselves in the last years. However, some artists are truly more committed than others, and really dedicate their talent and their time to the environment. Find here their charity work and causes for nature preservation.

1. Asher Jay

Asher Jay / Via static1.squarespace.com

Asher Jay is a designer, artist, and Creative Conservationist. In 2012 Ms. Jay was named a USNC United Nations Women Design Star, and in 2014 she was designated an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic. In 2013 she created a large animated digital billboard for March For Elephants - the work was viewed by over 1.5 million people in New York's Times Square. Ms. Jay has contributed work to Faberge's The Big Egg Hunt with the proceeds supporting anti-poaching efforts in Africa. She also created Garbagea, an online parody project where users interact in and experience the United Flotsam of Garbagea.

Learn more: asherjay.com

2. Leonardo DiCaprio

Ratpac Documentary Films / RatPac Documentary Films / Via assets.natgeotv.com

Leonardo DiCaprio has been a strong environmental activist for many years.

The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation started in 1998 and works in four key areas: protecting biodiversity, oceans conservation, wildlands conservation and climate change.

Among others, he has criss-crossed the planet in his role as UN messenger of Peace on Climate Change. A film, executive produced by Brett Ratner and Martin Scorsese, follows that journey to find both the crisis points and the solutions to this existential threat to human species.

Learn more: leonardodicaprio.com

3. Isaac Cordal

Isaac Cordal / Via cementeclipses.com

Isaac Cordal is a Spanish street artist that creates sculptures of little men dressed in grey business suits and installs them in unusual places. ‘Waiting for the Climate Change’ is one of his series that features 14 life-sized sculptures of these everymen submerged in water. His artwork is a critique of modern society’s view regarding climate change.

Learn more: cementeclipses.com

4. Frans Krajcberg

Commons.wikipedia / Via upload.wikimedia.org

Frans Krajcberg (born 12 April 1921) is a Polish-born naturalized Brazilian painter, sculptor, engraver and photographer. Known for his environmental activism, Krajcberg denounces the destruction of the Brazilian forests, using materials such as burnt wood from illegal forest fires in his artworks. He will be 96 this year !

Learn more : espace-krajcberg

5. Thierry Bisch

Thierry Bisch / Via delete.thierrybisch.com

In 2016 this French wildlife painter launched in Monaco the "Delete?" project. "Delete?" is an international undertaking aiming to make society aware of the imminent threat of extinction of a large number of species.

Prince Albert II of Monaco Fundation deeply involved with the preservation of wildlife, flora and maritime regions, supports this artistic project and the first large canvas has been installed in the heart of the Principality for the 10-year anniversary of the Foundation in June 2016. Followed by other enormous animals in Montreal, Singapore, Milano, Geneva, New York and other places...

Learn more: delete.thierrybisch.com"

6. Matthew Willey

matthewwilley.com / Via matthewwilley.com

Artist Matthew Willey is the founder of The Good of the Hive Initiative, and has committed to personally paint 50,000 honeybees – the number necessary for a healthy, thriving hive – in murals around the world. Through art and imagination, The Good of the Hive raises awareness about the current struggle and population decline of honeybees while celebrating their incredible behaviors.

Learn more: thegoodofthehive.com

7. Chris Jordan

Chris Jordan / Via chrisjordan.com

Jordan uses everyday commonalities such as a plastic cup and defines the blind unawareness involved in American consumerism. His work, while often unsettling, is a bold message about unconscious behaviors in our everyday lives, leaving it to the viewer to draw conclusions about the inevitable consequences which will arise from our habits.

Learn more: midwayjourney.com

8. Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Yann Arthus-Bertrand / Via yannarthusbertrand2.org

This French photographer, journalist, reporter and environmentalist is especially well known for his book Earth from Above (1999) and his film Home (2009).

On 22 April 2009 he was officially designated as the United Nations Environment Program Goodwill Ambassador (UNEP) and received the “Earth Champion” award for his commitment towards the environment and his work on public environmental awareness.

His GoodPlanet Foundation greatest desire is to promote living together.

GoodPlanet Foundation

9. Ludovico Einaudi

Greenpeace / Via greenpeace.org

Ludovico Einaudi is an Italian pianist and composer who composed the scores for a number of films and trailers, including The Intouchables and I’m Still Here, the TV miniseries Doctor Zhivago

In June 2016 he performed the track “Elegy for the Arctic” on a floating platform in the Arctic Ocean to support Greenpeace’s Save the Arctic operation. The video will be seen and shared millions of times on the internet.

Learn more: Elegy for the Arctic

10. Paulo Grangeon

WWF-Thailand / Via wwf.panda.org

French artist Paulo Grangeon, together with the World Wildlife Fund, decided to create 1,600 little paper-mache pandas in Taiwan and take them on a tour through 10 major Asian cities and around the world with the aim to promote conservation of wild pandas and their habitat, as a symbol for harmonious environmental philosophy between humans and nature.

The paper pandas of the exhibition are handmade from recycled paper in different sizes and displayed in landmark buildings and sites .

Learn more: WWF

11. Cate Blanchett

Getty Images / Via cnbc.com

Cate Blanchett is an activist for many environment causes.

Ambassador for the Australian Conservation Foundation, she was a spokesperson with its “Who on Earth Cares” program. She also campaigned for a carbon tax aimed at big industries in Australia, encouraging them to cut back on emissions.

As co-artistic director of the Sydney Theater Company, the actress was key proponents of Greening the Wharf, a project that oversaw 1,900 solar panels being installed in The Wharf Theatre at Sydney’s Walsh Bay. This now provides 70 percent of the theater’s electricity requirements and, together with a system for rainwater harvesting, will eventually turn it fully carbon neutral. Under her guidance, the theater also started reusing and recycling costumes and props.

Learn more: cate-blanchett.com

12. Gérard Rancinan

Gérard Rancinan / Via rancinan.com

Gérard Rancinan has been a activist for many years, in many topics.

His work “Et tout recommencera” is an original picture 15×9 m who has been exhibited on the main room and was presented at the 120 Presidents present for the COP21 climate conference that took place in Paris in december 2015.

Learn more: RancinanOfficial

13. Nick Brandt

Nick Brandt / Via nickbrandt.inheritthedust.com

Nick Brandt is an English photographer who photographs exclusively in the African continent, one of his goals being to record a last testament to the wild animals and places there before they are destroyed by the hands of man.

Learn more: Big Life Foundation

14. Naziha Mestaoui

Naziha Mestaoui / Via electronicshadow.org

For the 21st climate conference in Paris that took place in december 2015, belgian artist Naziha Mestaoui projected ‘one beat one tree’ onto the city’s famed monuments. The installation bridges the virtual and reality, technology and nature, as well as what is visible and invisible. Spectators to the artwork are granted the opportunity to create a digital tree that they will be able to see growing on buildings in rhythm with their heart, via a heartbeat sensor controlled through a smartphone. the computerized tree is then actually planted in europe, latin america, africa or asia rendering ‘each citizen a co-creator of our collective future beyond individualism,’ expressed the artist.

Learn more: 1heart1tree.org

15. Aida Sulova

Aida Sulova / Via sulova.com

Aida Sulova is bringing awareness to the rampant garbage problem in Bishkek by using trash bins as a canvas to express her socially conscious message. According to Wooster Collective, the street artist pastes photographic images of open mouths on garbage cans throughout the city to “remind people that what they throw into the world , eventually ends up inside us.”

Learn more: sulova.com