Suspect nabbed in brazen art theft from Moscow museum

In this file photo taken on August 12, 2016 a woman takes a photo during an exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Russian authorities said they arrested a man on January 28, 2019 suspected of stealing a famous painting by a 19th century artist from a Moscow museum in broad daylight a day earlier. In the second serious security incident at the city's Tretyakov gallery in the past eight months, a work by Russian landscape painter Arkhip Kuindzhi was stolen at around 6pm (1500 GMT) during opening hours on Sunday, the gallery said. Alexander NEMENOV / AFP. by Ola Cichowlas

MOSCOW (AFP).- Russian police on Monday detained a man they believe snatched a 19th-century painting off the wall in a busy Moscow museum then strolled out past visitors and security. Police and museum officials hailed the swift arrest and the recovery of the painting, but Sunday's brazen theft is raising questions about security at Moscow's Tretyakov gallery, home to some of Russia's most storied art.

The 31-year-old man took a Crimean landscape by Russian artist Arkhip Kuindzhi and carried it through a room filled with visitors, according to the officials. In a video shot by police after apprehending the man, who has not been named, he denies any wrongdoing. "I don't breach the law or the Russian Constitution," says the man, who is shown kneeling and clearly sporting a black eye.

The painting, depicting the Ai-Petri mountain in Crimea, was completed between 1898 and 1908. It is the second security incident to hit the gallery in a year, after a visitor in May seriously damaged a painting of Ivan the Terrible.

Drove off in a jeep
"He took it off the wall, walked behind a column and jumped out of the gallery with the painting without its frame," the gallery's director Zelfira Tregulova told a Moscow press conference. He then drove off with the oil painting in a jeep, she said.

Tregulova said the museum's security staff initially received a report that a fur coat had been stolen, but moments later one of the gallery's attendants sounded the alarm that the painting was missing. The incident occurred during the museum's opening hours at around 6:00 pm (1500 GMT) at an exhibition with more than 120 Kuindzhi paintings which Tregulova called "extremely popular." "At the time of the theft, the museum's security -- carried out by forces of the National Guard and the museum's security service -- was working normally," the gallery initially said in a statement.

Police arrested the suspect the next morning in a village outside Moscow. He admitted hiding the art work at a construction site from where it was recovered. The interior ministry said the man had previously been charged with drug possession and was currently not allowed to leave Russia. Tregulova said it was a "miracle" that the painting was found so quickly and undamaged. She added that experts are examining the work's condition, but expected it to be back at the gallery by Monday evening. She called the theft a "dramatic event for the entire Russian museum community."

'Security sensors'
Following the incident, Russia's culture ministry ordered extensive security checks at the Tretyakov gallery and in the country's other leading museums. The head of the ministry's museum department Vladislav Kononov told reporters Monday that all of the Tretyakov gallery's paintings will soon be equipped with electronic security sensors. These will sound if visitors come too close to a painting.

Kononov added that Russia's museums saw a record number of visitors in 2018 and that the "percentage of unlawful acts (in museums) is rising." He referred to an incident last May when a man slashed a painting by Ilya Repin depicting Tsar Ivan the Terrible after he killed his son. Tregulova said that "conclusions were drawn" from the May crime but "that was obviously not enough."
She said the museum had undertaken a modernisation of its security system, but has yet to change its "mentality." "The mentality is built on principles that a visitor is coming to look at art," she said. "There should be a conversation on how to stay open (to visitors) while making sure such incidents don't repeat themselves."

The Kremlin on Monday said the gallery is "protected at a proper level" but added that "conclusions must be drawn". It praised authorities for recovering the painting. "Thank God, thanks to the energetic efforts of our law enforcement officers, the painting was found quickly and efficiently," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

On its website, the gallery calls Arkhip Kuindzhi, who died in 1910, "one of the most memorable figures in Russian painting of the second half of the 19th century."

© Agence France-Presse
http://artdaily.com/news/110897/Suspect-nabbed-in-brazen-art-theft-from-Moscow-museum#.XFIYfFxKiUk

Banksy work stolen from Paris terror attack venue

The white stencilled oeuvre showing a sad-faced girl on one of the emergency doors of the famed Parisian venue was cut out and taken away.

PARIS (AFP).- A painting in homage to terror victims by famous street artist Banksy has been stolen from the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, where 90 people were killed in 2015 in a jihadist attack. The white stencilled oeuvre showing a sad-faced girl on one of the emergency doors of the famed Parisian venue was cut out and taken away. "Banksy's work, a symbol of recollection and belonging to all: locals, Parisians, citizens of the world has been taken from us," the establishment said, stressing the staff's "deep indignation."

A source close to the investigation told LCI television that "a group of hooded individuals armed with angle grinders cut the painting and took it away in a truck" on the night of Friday to Saturday. This work along with other similarly-themed paintings popped up in Paris last June and has been attributed to the reclusive British street artist. Banksy, whose identity is known to only a handful of friends, caused a sensation in October when one of his paintings began shredding itself, just after selling for $1.4 million (1.2 million euros).

© Agence France-Presse

http://artdaily.com/news/110865/Banksy-work-stolen-from-Paris-terror-attack-venue#.XE83u1xKiUk

Florence museum demands Germany return artwork stolen by Nazis

In this file photo visitors observe Michelangelo's painting Doni Tondo. Photo: Petar Milošević.

ROME (AFP).- The Uffizi Gallery in Florence on Tuesday appealed to Berlin for help in retrieving a stolen 18th century Dutch painting from a German family. "An appeal to Germany for 2019: We wish that the famous 'Vase of Flowers' by Dutch painter Jan van Huysum that was stolen by Nazi soldiers be returned to the Uffizi Gallery," the museum's German director Eike Schmidt said.

According to Schmidt, the oil painting is "currently held by a German family who, after all this time, has still not returned it to the museum despite many requests by the Italian state." Before it was stolen during World War II, the still-life, which measures 47x35 cm (18x14 inches), was part of a collection owned by another well-known Florence museum, the Palazzo Pitti. After being shipped to Germany the work's whereabouts remained unknown until 1991, after Germany was reunified, Schmidt said.

Van Huysum was a well-known specialist of still-life paintings, and until this one is returned, "the wounds of the Second World War and Nazi terror will not be healed," the museum director claimed. Schmidt, who is also an art historian, urged Germany "to abolish the statute of limitations for works stolen during the conflict and ensure they can be returned to their rightful owners."

In the meantime, a black and white copy of "Flower Vase" was hung Tuesday at the Uffizi Gallery, with the word "stolen" in English, German and Italian on it. A brief explanation tells visitors that the work was stolen by Nazi soldiers in 1944 and is now in a German private collection.

© Agence France-Presse
http://artdaily.com/news/110258/Florence-museum-demands-Germany-return-artwork-stolen-by-Nazis#.XEdkrFxKiUk

Argentine judge orders Kirchner's artwork be confiscated

Kirchner is leading polls alongside Macri ahead of presidential elections next October.

BUENOS AIRES (AFP).- An Argentine judge has ordered the seizure of more than 30 pieces of art owned by former president Cristina Kirchner, currently awaiting trial for corruption. Argentine media said the artworks were worth $4 million.

The seizure took place on Thursday night, judicial sources said, at Kirchner's Buenos Aires residence in the trendy Recoleta neighborhood. It had been ordered in August when judge Claudio Bonadio gave investigators the green light to search Kirchner's three properties after parliament had partially lifted the immunity her current role as a senator affords her.

She is accused of receiving tens of millions of dollars in bribes and running a criminal network related to the infamous "corruption notebooks" scandal -- revealed through the meticulous records of millions of dollars in bribes paid by businessmen to government officials kept by a ministerial chauffeur.

Reacting to the confiscations on Twitter, Kirchner posted the front page of the Clarin daily newspaper and commented on the juxtaposition of its two main stories: a hike by the current government in tariffs on public services and her artworks being removed. "Today, December 28, is the Day of the Innocents," said Kirchner before accusing Clarin of trying "to make you believe that there was a museum in my house so you get angry about that and not the new tariffs on light, gas and transport."

President Mauricio Macri's government announced on Thursday big increases in tariffs on public services. In Buenos Aires those will amount to around 40 percent on transport, 35 percent on gas and 55 percent on electricity for 2019, in a country that recently entered recession and with almost 50 percent inflation this year.

Kirchner is leading polls alongside Macri ahead of presidential elections next October. But she is embroiled in a corruption scandal that could derail her hopes of returning to the presidential palace -- Casa Rosada -- for a third time.

Last week a federal court accepted Bonadio's request that she be held in pre-trial detention pending her case reaching court -- although her parliamentary immunity, which protects her from prison but not prosecution, prevents that from happening. The court also seized 1.5 billion pesos ($38 million) worth of her assets.

Both Kirchner, 65, and her late husband and predecessor as president, Nestor, are suspected of having received millions of dollars in bribes from businessmen in exchange for large-scale public works contracts. The payments were documented by ministerial chauffeur Oscar Centeno in notebooks seized by investigators.

More than a dozen former government officials and 30 top businessman are implicated in the case. Prosecutor Carlos Stornelli has said a total of $160 million in bribes was handed over between 2005 and 2015.

© Agence France-Presse
http://artdaily.com/news/110256/Argentine-judge-orders-Kirchner-s-artwork-be-confiscated#.XEdj41xKiUk

Germany returns Nazi-looted work to French Jewish collector's heirs

"Portrait of a Seated Woman" by artist Thomas Couture was looted by the Nazis. AFP Photo.

BERLIN (AFP).- Germany on Tuesday returned a painting looted by the Nazis to the heirs of French Jewish politician and resistance leader Georges Mandel. The portrait of a seated woman by 19th-century French painter Thomas Couture had been on display in a spectacular collection hoarded by Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a Nazi-era art dealer. German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters presented the work to relatives of Mandel -- who was executed by French fascists near Paris in 1944 -- in a ceremony at the Martin Gropius Bau museum in Berlin.

Experts determined two years ago that the painting had been looted from Mandel, relying on a small hole in the canvas as evidence of its provenance. Mandel's lover had cited the hole above the seated woman's torso when she reported the painting stolen after the war.

Gruetters was joined at the ceremony by a representative of the Kunstmuseum Bern, which inherited Gurlitt's collection when he died in 2014, and an envoy from the French embassy. About 450 pieces from the collection by masters such as Monet, Gauguin, Renoir and Picasso have been on display in Bern, the western German city of Bonn, and in Berlin.

Gruetters called the Couture painting's return "a moving conclusion to the exhibitions of the Gurlitt trove" and underlined Berlin's commitment to provenance research. "We have Georges Mandel's family to thank that we could show this work in all three exhibitions," she said. "In this way, we could inform the public about the fate of the Jewish politician Georges Mandel, who was persecuted and imprisoned by the Nazis".

More than 1,500 works were discovered in 2012 in the possession of Munich pensioner Cornelius Gurlitt. His father, Hildebrand Gurlitt, had worked as an art dealer for the Nazis from 1938. The discovery of the stash made headlines around the world and revived an emotional debate about how thoroughly post-war Germany had dealt with art plundered by the Nazi regime.

When Gurlitt died, the Bern museum accepted the collection, though it left about 500 works in Germany for a government task force to research their often murky origins. Determining their provenance has been slow, and it remained unclear how many of the works were stolen.

The Couture portrait was the fifth work from the collection restituted to heirs, and the sixth definitively classed as having been looted by the Nazis. Marcel Bruelhart, who represented the Bern museum at Tuesday's event, welcomed the return of the art work. But he added that "what is decisive in the end is not the number of restitutions, but the honest and committed efforts in clarifying the origins of the complete works in the Gurlitt collection."

© Agence France-Presse http://artdaily.com/news/110393/Germany-returns-Nazi-looted-work-to-French-Jewish-collector-s-heirs#.XD34mFxKiUk