Paintings Found in Ravine
I know this title sounds crazy but I promise you I’m telling the truth! This all originates from what Greece calls the “Theft of the Century”.
National Art Gallery: Athens
This is easily the most famous art gallery in all of Greece, with a focus on European and Greek art from the 14th to 20th century. The museum opened in 1900 following the 1896 death of Alexander Soutzos, a jurist and art lover, who bequeathed his collection and estate to the Greek government to start an art museum.
2012
On January 9, 2012, a person slipped into the National Art Gallery through an unsecured balcony door. He seemed to know where all the alarms were located and how to trigger them and managed to distract the guards on duty by triggering a number of false alarms and sending them all over the museum while he grabbed two paintings and one drawing all from the museum’s permanent collection. He took the artworks to a stairwell where he used a pocket knife to remove them from their frames and escape. A third painting, Landscape with a Farm by Piet Mondrian, that was grabbed by the thief was left behind at the museum.
The stolen works are: Head of a Woman by Pablo Picasso (even more invaluable to the museum since it had been donated by the artist himself to the Greek people for their resistance to Nazi Germany in WWII. On the back was written “For the Greek people. A tribute by Picasso.”), Stammer Windmill by Piet Mondrian, and St. Diego de Alcala in Extacy with the Holy Trinity and the Symbols of Passion by Guglielmo Caccia.
In the wake of this theft police really found nothing, except that the security system at the museum was severely lacking (surprise, surprise) and had no real leads. Everyone thought that these valuable pieces of their cultural history were gone forever. Until…
2021
Almost a decade after the original theft there was finally a break in the case. The police haven’t shared many details but in April, 2021 they had managed to identify a suspect, through an investigation that, in previous years, had taken them all over Europe from Switzerland to Serbia to the Netherlands trying to locate him.
When they finally arrested this man, a 49-year-old painter on construction sites, he ended up confessing to the crime directly. He told the police he had been planning the crime for six months by every day going to the museum to monitor when guards took smoke breaks, where the alarms were, and how to set them off in different parts of the building.
After his escape from the building, after only 4 minutes inside, he brought the paintings and drawing to his home where his plan was to keep them for his personal enjoyment. He also ran a Twitter account with the handle @ArtFreak and was a self-proclaimed art lover. “Thoughts of stealing a work for himself “tormented” him. He never planned to sell the paintings, he claims: “I hadn’t decided which work I would take, but only that I wanted to take one”” (McGreevy, 2021). For years he kept them in his house and a remote warehouse for his own viewing pleasure.
In January, 2021, the painter was reading the news when he saw a report that the police were closer than ever to solving this mystery. In a panic he wrapped the two paintings in a piece of plastic and walked them to a dry riverbed in a ravine near his home and stashed them in a thicket of bushes. The drawing he flushed down the toilet.
Once he was arrested, he told the police about the hiding spot and lead them to the place where he had hidden the paintings. Finally, after almost 10 years they were recovered and brought back to the National Art Gallery.
Greece’s Minister of Citizen Protection said “Picasso had dedicated the painting to the Greek people as a recognition of the National Resistance. A Greek was found to deprive [the country of the precious painting], Greeks were found to bring it back” (McGreevy, 2021).
Works Cited
Jones, Bryony. “Picasso, Mondrian Works Stolen in Athens Art Heist”. 2012. CNN World. https://www.cnn.com/2012/01/09/world/europe/greece-athens-picasso-art-heist
McGreevy, Nora. “How A Self-Professed ‘Art Freak’ Pulled Off a Bold Heist at Greece’s National Museum”. 2021. The Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-self-professed-art-freak-pulled-off-bold-heist-greece-national-museum-180978092/
Papadopoulos, Yiannis and Maro Vasiliadou. “The Mysterious Chronical of the “Theft of the Century””. 2021. Greece Is. https://www.greece-is.com/mysterious-chronicle-theft-century/
“Picasso Painting Found as Builder Arrested Over Art Heist”. 2021. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57644846