Displaying items by tag: Stolen

Police in Madrid are searching for about 70 paintings worth an estimated €600,000 (£475,000) after three men walked out of an art gallery with the works as the sun rose last Thursday.

The thieves are thought to have spent two to three hours carrying the paintings out of the Puerta de Alcalá art gallery and propping them against nearby trees before loading them into a van.

The men are believed to have entered by punching a hole in the wall of a neighboring bar, said Pedro Márquez of the gallery, noting that the bar had been closed for about a year.

Yesterday it was reported that a bronze sculpture by Medardo Rosso had been stolen from Rome's Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna. In a bizarre turn of events, the sculpture has subsequently been found, in the museum, inside a storage locker for public use near the entrance.

The news was first reported by "Corriere della Sera," which informed that the artwork—a rare masterpiece by Rosso, entitled "Bambino Malato" (1893-95)—was located by the police yesterday afternoon.

Investigators claim that the lockers had been carefully inspected after the theft took place last Friday afternoon. So they are working with the hypothesis that the thief had a change of heart and returned the sculpture at a later time.

An unknown thief or group of thieves stole Pablo Picasso's "Visage aux Mains (Face with Hands)" (1956) from the Amsterdam-based Leslie Smith Gallery's booth at Art Miami, the "Miami Herald" reports. The work is a 16.5 inch in diameter silver plate and is believed to have been snatched sometime after 10:30pm on Thursday night. Police have classified the heist as grand theft.

Gallery owner David Smith discovered that the plate was missing from its holder upon arriving to Art Miami on Friday morning around 10:45am.

The Badische Landesmuseum in Karlsruhe, Germany has announced that it has identified seven Nazi looted artworks within its collection. The discovery follows a four-year-long audit of the museum's entire collection, specifically looking for Nazi looted artworks, reported Die Welt.

The six paintings and one late Gothic sculpture had been kept in one of the museum's warehouses for over 70 years. The provenance researcher at the museum, Katharina Siefert, established that the works belonged to a Mannheim-based Jewish family.

Andy Warhol’s foundation sued the iconic pop artist’s former bodyguard, accusing him of stealing a 1964 painting of actress Elizabeth Taylor, entitled “Liz,” and hiding it for more than 30 years.

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, established by the artist’s will to hold his works, alleged in a civil complaint that former bodyguard Agusto Bugarin is a “patient thief” who stole the work in 1984 and is now trying to sell it “after everyone he thought could challenge his ownership of the work had died.”

A painting by French Impressionist Edgar Degas valued at 6 million euros ($7.6 million) was stolen from a home in the Cypriot port city of Limassol, police said.

The painting, measuring 61 by 47 centimeters (24 by 19 inches) and entitled “Ballerina Adjusting Her Slipper,” was stolen yesterday along with items including gold watches and gold opera glasses worth a total of 157,000 euros, the Cypriot police said today in a statement on the force’s website.

A pair of American tourists were pinched by Italian police when Fiumicino airport authorities in Rome discovered a stolen Pompeii relic in their luggage, reports the Local. The remarkably ill-advised crime rivals our favorite Italian art news story of the year, “Italian Student Smashes Sculpture While Taking Selfie” in its general stupidity.

The massive artifact, which was removed from a building at the historic site, weighed more than 65 pounds, but that wasn’t about to stop the thieves from smuggling it on board an aircraft and back to the States.

A portrait by Gustav Klimt could be put up for sale, potentially fetching over $30 million, to resolve a dispute between a Viennese art foundation and the granddaughter of the woman in the painting, a lawyer for the granddaughter said on Thursday.

Klimt, an Austrian symbolist, painted the portrait of Gertrud Loew in 1902 and it belonged to her at least until 1938, a year before she fled Austria to escape the Nazis.

Her U.S.-based granddaughter, Andrea Felsovanyi, has been contesting ownership with the private Klimt Foundation, which currently holds the work.

A Claude Monet landscape has been discovered in a suitcase that belonged to late art hoarder Cornelius Gurlitt.

The case, which was left at a hospital where the German had been staying, was handed over to the administrators of his estate.

They are tasked with finding out if the newly uncovered artwork was stolen by the Nazis during World War Two.

Gurlitt, who died in May aged 81, had a stash of 1,280 works of art hidden in his Munich apartment.

The U.S. has returned nine stolen 18th-century paintings by Mexican artist Miguel Cabrera to the government of Peru.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara says the works were stolen from a church in Lima in 2008. He says they were smuggled out of Peru to be trafficked on the international art market.