This heist was a true masterpiece.
A masked bandit struck a Paris museum with a faulty security system yesterday and made off with five paintings worth over $100 million — including major works by Picasso and Matisse, authorities said.
The stunning theft occurred early in the morning at the Paris Museum of Modern Art, which faces the Eiffel Tower across the Seine River. The thief cut a padlock on a gate and broke a window, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
Shockingly, the museum’s alarm system had not been functioning properly dating back to March 30, while the museum awaited back-ordered spare parts to repair it, said Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe.
So even though three guards were on duty, “they saw nothing,” as the thief calmly removed the paintings from their frames and disappeared into the night.
No one noticed until morning that Picasso’s “The Pigeon with the Peas,” worth an estimated $28 million, and Henri Matisse’s “Pastoral,” worth around $18.5 million, were gone.
The other stolen paintings were Georges Braque’s “Olive Tree near Estaque,” Amedeo Modigliani’s “Woman with a Fan” and Fernand Leger’s “Still Life with Chandeliers.” In all, the works were worth an estimated $112 million.
“This is a serious crime to the heritage to humanity,” said Christophe Girard, cultural deputy to the mayor of Paris.
Investigators believe a criminal gang pulled off the job.
Art experts said the theft appeared to be one of the biggest art heists ever when considering the value of the works, the prominence of the artists, the high profile of the museum and the shockingly brazen nature of the theft. The largest art heist in terms of pure monetary value was a $500 million theft of Van Gogh paintings in Amsterdam in 1991. They were recovered shortly afterwards.
Alice Farrren-Bradley, of the Art Loss Registry in London, said it would be “virtually impossible” to sell the works, but that they could be used as “collateral to broker other deals,” such as drugs or weapons transactions.
“They are not necessarily going to be bought by some great lover of the arts,” she said.
Pierre Cornette de Saint-Cyr, director of a neighboring art museum, the Palais de Tokyo, called those responsible “fools.”
“These five paintings are unsellable, so thieves, sirs, you are imbeciles, now return them,” he said.