£84m paintings stolen in ’spectacular’ Swiss raid
Four paintings by Van Gogh, Cézanne, Degas and Monet worth an estimated SFR180m (£84m) have been stolen from a museum in Switzerland, police said today.
Zurich police said Cezanne’s Boy in the Red Waistcoat, Monet’s Poppy Field at Vetheuil, Ludovic Lepic and his Daughter, by Edgar Degas, and Vincent van Gogh’s Blooming Chestnut Branches were stolen. A reward of SFR 100,000 was offered for any information leading to the recovery of the paintings.
Officers said yesterday’s raid was a “spectacular art robbery” but did not name the museum involved, saying only that it was in the city’s eighth district.
The district is home to the Emil Bührle Foundation, a private collection, boasting many Impressionist works, founded by a Zurich industrialist who lived between 1890 and 1956.
The works he bought form one of the most important 20th century private collections of European art, with French Impressionism and post-Impressionism constituting the core.
The raid comes after two Picasso oil paintings were stolen last Wednesday. The theft followed an exhibition of the artist’s work in the town of Pfaeffikon, near Zurich.
Tête de Cheval (Head of Horse) and Verre et Pichet (Glass and Pitcher), were on loan from the Sprengel museum, in Germany, to the Seedamm-Kulturzentrum. Police are investigating whether the thieves involved in last week’s theft – who set off an alarm as they fled – had hidden in the building before it closed. Seven Picasso oil paintings were stolen from a Zurich gallery in 1994 and have not been found.
Portrait of Suzanne Bloch (1904), worth around £25.7m, was stolen from the Sao Paulo museum of art in Brazil in December, but was returned undamaged last month. guardian.co.uk
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