Thursday, May 20, 2010
Art / News World's Bitchingist Art Thief Steals a Picasso, a Matisse, a Braque, a Modigliani and a Léger from Paris Museum
Posted by Mark Asch on Thu, May 20, 2010 at 11:01 AM
The daring and ingenuity involved in breaking into a heavily secured museum and stealing art off the walls—not to mention the glamor and secrecy of the black market in high art—gives the art thief a certain charisma, which is only fitting, given the invariably impeccably refined aesthetic taste and art-historical knowledge demonstrated in your average art heist.
All of which is a long way of going about reporting that last night, a lone thief broke into the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and stole five paintings: Pablo Picasso's Pigeon with Peas, Henri Matisse's Pastoral, Georges Braque's Olive Tree near Estaque, Amedeo Modigliani's Woman with a Fan, and Fernand Leger's Still Life with Chandeliers.
What. Yeah. I mean, there's a Chagall and a Gris I might have grabbed if it were me, but those five are among the best-known paintings in the museum. A slideshow is after the jump. (The thief, presumably working off an order filled out by a shadowy rich man, smashed a window and a padlock, and removed the paintings from their frames with care.)
Slideshow
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