Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Major Picasso Theft (UPDATED)

Two Picassos worth about $66 million were stolen from his granddaughter's house in Paris Monday night. Police said there were signs of breaking and entering. The full story is here.

The granddaughter, Diana Widmaier-Picasso, is an art historian and author of "Picasso: Art Can Only be Erotic."

According to the linked article, the Art Loss Register currently lists a total of 549 missing Picassos.

UPDATE: Alan Riding now has a story up at The New York Times site, along with a podcast interview and images of the two paintings. He adds that "police said that two drawings, one by Picasso and another unsigned, were also stolen, but this could not be confirmed by the Picasso family lawyer." He also notes that "the artist’s descendants have had artworks stolen before. One famous theft involved pieces worth about $17 million, taken from the Cannes home of Marina Picasso, another of the artist’s granddaughters, in 1989. Those were later recovered. Seven Picasso oils stolen from a gallery in Zurich in 1994 have yet to be found."