Two Picasso paintings worth a total of €50 million have been stolen from the Paris home of the artist's granddaughter, it emerged yesterday. Angelique Chrisafis in Paris reports.
Maya and the Doll and Portrait of Jacqueline disappeared on Monday night, but police said there had been no sign of a break-in at art historian Diana Widmaier Picasso's home on the city's Left Bank. She and a friend had been in the building at the time the paintings vanished, and the circumstances of the theft were still unclear last night, her lawyer said.
Ms Widmaier Picasso is descended from the Spanish painter's relationship with Marie-Therese Walter. As a voluptuous 17-year-old, Ms Walter was approached on a Paris street by the artist who announced: "I'm Picasso! You and I are going to do great things together."
She became his companion and muse for more than 10 years, posing for scores of paintings and reportedly inspiring a face in his painting Guernica. She hanged herself four years after the painter's death. Their daughter, Maya, was Ms Widmaier Picasso's mother.
One of the stolen works, Maya and the Doll, is one of Picasso's classic oil paintings in bright shades, depicting his young daughter with her hair in bunches, cradling a doll.
The larger painting of the two is one of several portraits of his second wife Jacqueline Roque.
Anne Baldassari, director of Paris's Picasso Museum, suggested several other paintings and drawings were also taken in the "very large theft". The robbery was the latest in a long line of thefts targeting Picasso, whose prolific output, recognisable signature and valuable works have attracted thieves for decades. There are currently more than 400 Picasso pieces missing worldwide.
Twelve Picasso paintings, valued at about £9 million, were stolen from the French Riviera villa of another of his grandchildren, Marina Picasso, in 1989.
In 1976, 118 works were stolen from a museum in the southern city of Avignon in one of France's largest art thefts.
In 1997, a gunman walked into a central London art gallery and stole Picasso's Tete de Femme, worth more than £500,000, and fled in a taxi. The work was later recovered.
Charles Dupplin, art expert at insurers Hiscox in London, said the latest paintings could have been taken by "art nappers" intending to hold the pictures to ransom, or they could have been stolen to order for a collector.
"It would be impossible to sell these iconic works in the open market," he said.
"In recent years we have seen some evidence of stealing to order in various European countries."
- (Guardian service)