$64M Of Recently Stolen Paintings Found In Nuthouse Parking Lot
ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) - A frantic search for four stolen Impressionist paintings led to a most unlikely place: the parking lot of a mental hospital just a few hundred yards from the scene of the crime.
There, in the back seat of an unlocked car, a painting by Claude Monet and another by Vincent van Gogh were found Monday in perfect condition, authorities said Tuesday.
The paintings, worth $64 million combined, were still under the display glass used by the private museum from which they were stolen in a Feb. 10 armed robbery, museum director Lukas Gloor said.
“I am incredibly relieved that two paintings have returned,” Gloor said. “We’re very happy that both the paintings are in absolutely impeccable shape.”
The other two paintings taken from the E.G. Buehrle Collection—by Paul Cezanne and Edgar Degas—remain missing, police said. Together, the four paintings are worth an estimated $163 million.
Gloor said he suspected the robbers abandoned the two paintings, which were the largest of the four, because their size complicated transporting them.
They were discovered Monday on the back seat of a white sedan in a parking lot in front of the University Psychiatric Clinic. It was not known how long the car had been there, police said.
An employee of the clinic making a routine check of the lot noted the car because it was unlocked. Police immediately sealed off the area, examined the car and hauled it away.
“But we must not forget,” he added, “that two more paintings of our collection are still missing, including our collection’s landmark ‘Boy in the Red Waistcoat.’”
That painting alone is worth $91 million. The other missing painting is Degas’ “Ludovic Lepic and his Daughter,” worth $9 million.
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the kind of paintings are recorded by each art insurance traders, museums, art catalogues, so difficult to sell them and remain unknown, difficult to find a collectionnor that would take the risk ; the best they had to do, abandon them incognito
February 19th, 2008 at 1:43 pm