The Wall Street Journal-20080212-Politics - Economics- Big Art Thefts Jolt Zurich- Paintings by Monet- Cezanne- van Gogh- Degas- Picasso Hit
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Politics & Economics: Big Art Thefts Jolt Zurich; Paintings by Monet, Cezanne, van Gogh, Degas, Picasso Hit
Full Text (628 words)In one of Europe's biggest art thefts, three armed robbers stole four 19th-century paintings valued at about 180 million Swiss francs, or $163 million, from a private collection in Zurich.
Sunday's theft -- of works by Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet and Edgar Degas -- from the Emil Georg Buhrle Collection came just four days after two paintings by Pablo Picasso, both valued at several million francs, were taken from a cultural center in Pfaeffikon, a lakeside town near Zurich.
The Zurich cantonal police, who are leading the investigation, didn't rule out a connection between the cases. A police spokesman said professionals were likely behind Sunday's robbery. He added that their main target may have been Cezanne's "Boy in the Red Waistcoat," an oil canvas whose insurance value stands at 100 million francs.
The robbers, clad in black and wearing ski masks, entered the museum, located in a gated villa in one of Zurich's exclusive residential areas, on Sunday afternoon during regular opening hours. While one of the robbers held the museum's staff and some visitors at gunpoint, the other two removed Cezanne's picture, which was hung behind a glass wall. After an alarm went off, the two robbers took three pictures near Cezanne's work and ran out of the building before fleeing in a white car, police said.
"The robbery may have been an order from an art lover or it could just as well be that the robbers want to blackmail the insurance company or the owners," said chief investigator Peter Ruegger, adding that blackmail was the more likely possibility.
The other three works include Monet's "Poppy Field at Vetheuil," valued at about 20 million francs, Degas'"Ludovic Lepic and his Daughter" and van Gogh's "Blooming Chestnut Branches." Both paintings together are valued at about 60 million francs.
Willi Korte, a Washington-based art detective who has worked with museums and families in Europe and elsewhere to recover stolen art, said he was "stunned" by the two thefts, adding that art thefts appear to be getting more violent.
"Switzerland is known to be a fairly safe place for art," Mr. Korte said. He said he doubted the paintings would be sold quickly and said the paintings could be used a collateral among criminals.
Other art experts say Switzerland isn't particularly vulnerable to art theft.
"No one country is more vulnerable than others, but money and greed are definitely motivating thieves to steal art now," said Chris Marinello, director and general counsel of the Art Loss Register, a U.K.-based company that maintains the world's largest database of stolen art and has teams that can be hired to search and recover art.
"Art is something that they can get quickly and move quickly, and most believe they can either sell it on the black market or use it as collateral to launder money or complete a drug deal," he said.
Mr. Marinello said that 387 pieces of artwork were stolen in Switzerland in 2007, more than half of them timepieces. Swiss police put the value of the stolen goods at about 400 million francs. Meanwhile, the global black market for stolen art and antiquities is valued at more than $6 billion, up from $4 billion about five years ago, as the art values have risen and with it their demand from thieves, Mr. Marinello said.
Lukas Gloor, curator at the Buhrle museum, said the Buhrle foundation will offer a reward of about 100,000 francs for information helping to recover the paintings.
In December, a painting by Picasso, valued at about $50 million, was stolen at the Sao Paulo Museum of Art in Brazil. In August 2004, two paintings by Edvard Munch, valued at about $141 million, including "The Scream," were stolen in Oslo and recovered two years later.
