The Hindu : Karnataka News : Gang steals £52m worth of paintings

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Dec 22, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka

Gang steals £52m worth of paintings

Tom Phillips

Rio de Janeiro: A gang of arts thieves on Thursday launched a dawn raid on one of South America’s most famous art galleries, making off with two paintings together worth £52 million.

The paintings, by Picasso and the Brazilian painter Candido Portinari, were the centre-pieces of the art collection at Sao Paulo’s Art Museum, or Masp as it is better known.

The museum’s collection is made up of over 7,500 works of art, including paintings by Rubens and Dali, the museum’s collection is valued at around £600 million.

Following the theft, museum authorities called in members of Interpol and Brazil’s Federal police in an attempt to prevent the paintings being smuggled out of the country.

A sign hung from the museum entrance said it was closed “for technical reasons”. Initial police reports suggested the raid had been planned in minute detail and possibly with the help of inside information.

Sources in the city police and at the museum told the Sao Paulo press that three or four men, possibly wearing masks, entered the building through the front doors at just after 5 a.m.

Just three minutes later, they reportedly fled the scene, leaving behind a hydraulic jack and an earpiece that police said might have been used to communicate with thieves outside the building. The gang took with them Picassso’s Portrait of Suzanne Bloch and Portinari’s 1939 painting The Coffee Worker, which pictures an Afro-Brazilian coffee planter at work on a plantation.

The Picasso painting, which dates from 1904 and is part of the artist’s so-called blue period, was reported in Brazil to be worth at least £50 million alone. The Portinari painting, meanwhile, was valued at around £2 million.

In a statement Masp’s representative Fernando Pinho confirmed that the two paintings had been stolen from different rooms on the museum’s second floor. He said the fact the paintings were in “separate and far apart” exhibition rooms indicated they had been “specific targets”.

“The [security] cameras recorded the action of the thieves and the tapes have been handed over to the police,” Pinho said. However, local police chief Marcos Gomes de Moura said the tapes were unlikely to help with the investigation.

“The tapes do not show the thieves inside the museum,” he told reporters in Sao Paulo. “We only have images of the thieves in the entrance hall, shortly before they went in.” Mr. Moura said he believed a private collector could have ordered the theft.

“These are not works or art that are sold in any old market. They are of great interest to collectors. The art market is restricted and I imagine that somebody with a high power of acquisition ordered them.” — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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