GREEK POLICE JUST FOUND PICASSO, MONDRIAN PAINTINGS STOLEN FROM GALLERY IN 2012

Wed 30 June 2021:

Works by 20th-century masters recovered nearly a decade after audacious burglary

Two paintings by eminent artists Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian have been found by Greek police nearly a decade after they were stolen from a gallery in Athens, authorities announced on Tuesday.

The incident had been called the theft of the century, shocking the nation and leaving police astonished by its audacity. The burglary took no more than seven minutes.

In that time the paintings were stripped of their frames before being spirited out of the gallery through a smashed balcony door after the alarm system was manipulated to send the sole guard, then on duty, in another direction.

The Spanish master’s “Head of a Woman” and Mondrian’s “Stammer Windmill” were stolen from the National Gallery in Athens in 2012, according to a police statement.

The artworks were hidden at a gorge in Keratea in East Attica and one suspect has been arrested in connection with the theft, the police said.

A third work – a pen and sepia sketch on paper by Italian artist Guglielmo Caccia – was also found but in damaged condition, the statement added.

The culture minister, Lina Mendoni, described the presentation of the retrieved works as “a special day, [a day of] great joy and emotion”. Pablo Picasso, she said, had personally donated the Cubist painting to the nation in 1949 five years after Hitler’s troops withdrew from the country, inscribing the words “for the Greek people, a tribute. Picasso” on the back of the canvas.

Addressing a news conference, Citizen Protection Minister Michalis Chrisochoidis said there is “intense joy” in Greece as Picasso had dedicated this particular painting to “our country and the Greek people.”

Picasso donated the painting to Greece in 1949 to honor the Greek resistance against German occupation during World War II.

Dutch artist Mondrian’s work from 1905 was bought in 1963 by Greek collector Alexandros Pappas and later donated to the National Gallery.

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