Sat, May 22, 2010 page6

• Five masterpieces stolen in US$123 million Paris heist

  • AP
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  A broken alarm system made it as easy as 1-2-3: A masked intruder clipped a padlock, smashed a window and stole a Picasso, a Matisse and three other masterpieces from a Paris museum on Thursday — a US$123 million haul that is one of the world’s biggest art heists.

  Offloading the artwork may prove a tougher task, however, with Interpol and collectors worldwide now on high alert.

  In what seemed like an art thief’s fantasy, the alarm system had been broken since March in parts of the Paris Museum of Modern Art, according to the city’s mayor, Bertrand Delanoe.

  

  An undated handout shows a reproduction of Pastorale, Nympe et Faune painted in 1906 by Henri Matisse, one of five works stolen from the Paris Museum of Modern Art.

  PHOTO: REUTERS

  The museum, in a tony neighborhood across the Seine River from the Eiffel Tower, reopened in 2006 after spending US$18 million and two years upgrading its security system. Spare parts had been ordered to fix the alarm, but had not yet arrived, the mayor said in a statement.

  So with no alarm to worry about, a lone masked intruder entered the museum about 3:50am, said Christophe Girard, deputy culture secretary at Paris City Hall. The thief cut a padlock on a gate, then broke a side window and climbed inside — his movements caught on one of the museum’s functioning cameras, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.

  The intruder later slipped back out, carrying the canvases and leaving behind empty frames. The whole thing took 15 minutes, a police official said.

  Three security guards were on duty overnight, but “they saw nothing,” Girard said. A night watchman discovered the theft around 7am.

  The stolen works included Pablo Picasso’s Le pigeon aux petits-pois (“The Pigeon with the Peas”), an ochre-toned Cubist oil painting worth an estimated US$28 million, and La Pastorale (“Pastoral”), a ­pastel-hued oil painting of nudes on a hillside by Henri Matisse worth about US$17.5 million, Girard said.

  Also seized were La femme a l’eventail (“Woman with a Fan”) by Amedeo Modigliani, L’olivier pres de l’Estaque (“Olive Tree near Estaque”) by Georges Braque and Nature morte aux chandeliers (“Still Life with Chandeliers”) by Fernand Leger.

  Estimates of the total value of the paintings varied: The prosecutor’s office initially put their worth as high as US$613 million, but later downgraded the figure to about US$111 million. Girard said the total value was about US$123 million.

  Within hours of Thursday’s heist, red-and-white tape surrounded the Museum of Modern Art and signs on the Art Deco building’s ornate bronze doors said it was closed for “technical reasons.” On a cordoned-off balcony, police wearing blue gloves and face masks examined the museum’s broken window and the discarded frames.

  The paintings appeared to have been carefully removed from the disassembled frames, not sliced out.

  Investigators were trying to determine whether the intruder operated alone, Girard told ­reporters.

  Stephane Thefo, a specialist at Interpol who handles international art theft investigations, expressed doubt that one person could have pulled off the heist, even if only one person was caught on camera.

  Many high-profile art thefts have ended in failure, with the artworks recovered as thieves struggle to trade their illegal bounty for cash. However, some famous stolen works remain at large — such as those seized more than two decades ago from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

  Alice Farren-Bradley of the Art Loss Registry in London said the Paris theft appeared to be one of the biggest art heists ever, considering the prominence of the artists, the value of the paintings and the high profile of the museum.

  However, she said it will be “virtually impossible” to sell such prominent paintings on the open market and typically stolen art fetches lower prices on the black market.

  “Very often they can be used as collateral to broker other deals” ­involving drugs or weapons, she said. “They are not necessarily going to be bought by some great lover of the arts.”

  Picasso is the world’s most ­stolen artist due to his prolific output and the value of his works. The Art Loss Register lists some 550 missing Picasso pieces across different mediums.
• Most Popular

  • 1

    MAC warns of PRC arrests, detentions

  • 2

    US exempts security funds for Taiwan

  • 3

    Taiwan blacklists two Chinese schools

  • 4

    Actor, 11 others suspected of dodging military service

  • 5

    French aircraft carrier stages drills with Philippines