Art

Dutch police are reporting that seven paintings, including works by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, and Henri Matisse, were stolen today in a 3.00am burglary at the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam. The details are still sketchy, but the Associated Press says the masterworks are potentially worth hundreds-of-millions of Euros.

To the museum, anyway. For the crooks themselves, the loot might well turn out to be worthless. According to Robert Wittman, founder of the FBI’s art crime team and author of the memoir Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures, it’s nearly impossible for thieves to sell famous pieces of art, even on the black market. I talked to Wittman today about why yanking a Picasso is such a bad business plan, his investigations into art capers around the world, and why cheap paintings might be more valuable for a crook — via redwolf.newsvine.com

An oil painting by the German artist Gerhard Richter has sold for £21m ($34m) — an auction record for a work by a living artist.

Abstraktes Bild, painted in 1994 , which was owned by rock star Eric Clapton, has been described as a masterpiece of calculated chaos.

The artwork, expected to fetch £9-12m, was sold to an anonymous bidder at Sotheby’s in London on Friday.

A round of applause broke out as the painting went under the hammer.

Gerhard Richter, 80, who lives in Cologne, is considered by some to be the world’s greatest living painter — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A painting bought at a flea market in the US may turn out to be a rare bargain — a work by French master Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

It was bought by a woman as part of a box lot that included a doll and a plastic cow, and cost about $50.

She took it to a Virginia auction house where experts said they believed it was Renoir’s Paysage Bords de Seine — a river scene — from about 1879.

The auctioneers expect it to sell for up to $100,000 later this month — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Italian art experts have reportedly discovered around 100 drawings and a number of paintings by the young Renaissance master Caravaggio, in a find that could be worth up to 700 million euros.

The artworks were found among a collection of works held at Sforza Castle in the northern Italian city, which were done by the pupils of painter Simone Peterzano, with whom Caravaggio studied from the age of 11.

Photographs of the works, extracts of which were published in the Italian media, range from preparative anatomical sketches to religious scenes.

The newly-unearthed works could be worth around 700 million euros ($840 million) according to experts Maurizio Bernardelli Curuz and Adriana Conconi Fedrigolli, who has been studying the paintings for two years, the ANSA news agency said — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A Salvador Dali painting that was stolen from a New York City gallery last week has been mailed back in pristine condition.

Earlier this week the gallery received a brief email message by an unknown person, saying Cartel de Don Juan Tenirio is on its way back to you already.

That message raised glimmers of hope that the 1949 ink and watercolour piece would be returned.

Deputy New York Police Commissioner John McCarthy says the package was mailed from a location in Europe, and bore a phony sender name and address — via redwolf.newsvine.com