Paintings by Old Masters Heisted in Zurich
Paintings by Old Masters Heisted in Zurich
Four oil paintings worth more than $163.5 Million (£80m) by Monet, Degas, van Gogh and Cezanne were taken in the weekend robbery from the E.G. Buehrle museum.
The heisted pieces were Claude Monet’s “Poppy field at Vetheuil” (1880), Edgar Degas’ “Ludovic Lepic and his Daughter”(1871), Vincent van Gogh’s “Blooming Chestnut Branches” (1890), and Paul Cezanne’s “Boy in the Red Waistcoat” (1890).
Three G’s wearing ski masks and dark clothing ran up in the museum half-an-hour before closing on Sunday. This was largest art robbery in Switzerland’s history and one of the biggest ever in Europe.
While one of the men used a pistol to force museum personnel to the floor, the other two heistmen went into the exhibition hall and collected the four masterpieces. They were said to have spoken German with a Slavic accent (but of course they might have been disguising their voices).
The FBI estimates the market for stolen art at $6 billion(£3bn) annually (making it a very robust industry) and Interpol has about 30,000 pieces of stolen art in its database.
Three other versions of the stolen Cezanne painting — perhaps the most famous of those seized — exist in the National Gallery in Washington, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Its value alone is thought to be $90 million.
Last week, two Pablo Picasso paintings were stolen from a Swiss exhibition near Zurich.
The two oil paintings, Tete de cheval (Head of horse) and Verre et pichet (Glass and pitcher), were on loan from the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Germany.
Again, authorities are talking about “entirely new dimension in criminal culture” which I talked about in Criminality in The Luxury Sector.
Swiss Police called it a “spectacular art robbery.” This is one of the few times I agree with police.
The three G’s are at large and presumibly living large.
No one was hurt.
The Rest is Up to You………..
Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com/
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12/02/2008 at 5:36 pm Permalink
Always with the newest in heist news. The g manifesto is probably the best source of heists and boxing in addition to Game on the internet.
15/02/2008 at 4:29 pm Permalink
in other missing/stolen art news.
some picassos and candido portinaris that were recently heisted in sao paulo turned up in a favela leaving against a shanty…or so the story goes.
a warhol featuring dollar sign was brought into an auction house in NYC for id by a guy who “bought” it at a NJ flea market. he also happened to work near the gallery where the same print went missing 20 odd years ago.
so if you are looking to pull some big ticket items, line up the buyers before you hit the galleries or all you have is something nice to look at and nothing in the bank.
12/08/2008 at 10:17 pm Permalink
ooompaloompa,
“so if you are looking to pull some big ticket items, line up the buyers before you hit the galleries or all you have is something nice to look at and nothing in the bank”
Dead on.
– MPM