Many art thieves are often motivated by the valuable pieces of art that weigh only a few kilograms at most, resale or salvage can be worth millions of dollars. Transportation of items such as paintings is also negligible, assuming the thief is willing to do some damage to the painting by cutting it out of the frame and rolling it into a shipping tube.
1. The Museum of Modern Art in Paris, May 2010
A lone thief broke into a Paris museum on May 19, 2010 and stole five paintings, including masterpieces by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, French police said today. The paintings are estimated to be worth just under 100 million euros (86 million pounds; $123 million). Camera footage reportedly shows someone entering the museum through a window at night. None of these works of art have yet been recovered.
2. Pinacoteca of the State of São Paulo, June 2008
In the second of two art thefts in São Paulo in six months, three armed men used a crowbar and a jack at 5 am on June 12, 2008 to break into the Museo Pinacoteca do Estado. Two Picasso masterpieces were stolen: The Painter and the Model (1963) and Minotaur, Drinker and Women (1933), as well as Di Cavalcanti’s Women at the Window (1926) and Segall’s Couple (1919). The four masterpieces have an estimated value of £388,000 and only one was recovered: The Painter and the Model by Picasso.
3. Emile Bührle Foundation robbery in Switzerland, February 2008
Forget about the elaborate heists you see in the movies; All it took to steal four masterpieces from a private Zurich museum in 2008 was three guys and some ski masks, one of them brandishing a gun in broad daylight and driving around with $163 million worth of impressionist paintings jutting out of the trunk of your car. Two of the paintings, Monet’s “Poppies near Vetheuil” and van Gogh’s “Blossoming Chestnut Branches,” were later found in an unlocked parked car.
4. Theft at the Sao Paulo Museum of Art, December 2007
In just three minutes, three thieves broke into the Sao Paolo Art Museum in Brazil and made off with $56 million worth of art. Taking advantage of the low security on the upper floors of the museum, criminals made off with Pablo Picasso’s Portrait of Suzanne Bloch (1904, valued at $50 million, pictured) and O Lavrador De Cafe by Candido Portinari (1939, valued at 6 million dollars). Police found the paintings after arresting two of the culprits. The artworks were escorted back to the museum by 100 police officers.
5. Theft from the Munch Museum in Norway, August 2004
On August 22, 2004, two masked and armed men broke into the Munch Museum and threatened its workers with a daring daylight robbery. The thieves got away with a couple of famous Munch paintings, The Scream and The Virgin. The approximate figure for both paintings was 100 million euros, combined. In May 2006, authorities arrested and sentenced three men. Both paintings were recovered in relatively good condition in Norway in 2006.
6. Drumlanrig Castle in Scotland, August 2003
A good disguise always works, apparently even for criminals. Take for example the thieves who stole Leonardo Da Vinci’s Virgin of the Winder in broad daylight around 11am. chart. As the alarms around the site do not go off during the day, the thieves managed to convince the other tourists not to intervene, telling them: “Don’t worry… we are the police. This is just a practice.” Although the thieves were never caught, the painting was recovered in 2007.
7. Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester Robbery, April 2003
In 2003, thieves made off with works by Gauguin, Picasso and van Gogh from the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, England. However, the paintings were soon discovered in a public restroom a short distance from the museum, with a handwritten note reading: “Intent was not to steal. Just to highlight unfortunate security.” Although the police doubted that the thieves had such altruistic intentions, the museum took steps to improve its security.
8. Theft at the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands, December 2002
The museum, in the heart of Amsterdam, contains the world’s largest collection of works by Van Gogh. Contains more than 200 paintings and 500 drawings by the Dutch Post-Impressionist. The thieves broke into the museum and stole two very valuable paintings by Vincent Van Gogh from his early days. The stolen paintings are well known to art lovers: View of the sea in Scheveningen and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen. They were executed in 1882 and 1884, respectively.
9. The Stephane Breitwieser Collection, November 2001
Can anyone imagine a waiter involved in up to 200 art thefts? Everyone will have their doubts, but then there’s French waiter Stephane Breitwieser, a man who collects $1.4 billion worth of artifacts from various European museums. In 2001, Breitwieser was caught stealing a cornet in Switzerland and ended up confessing everything. The art was amassed in his bedroom, but not everything could be saved; Breitwieser’s mother, either out of love or anger, destroyed some of the incriminating evidence. Imagine, Breitweiser wrote an autobiography in 2006.
10. Theft from the Stockholm Museum in Sweden, December 2000
A crime that mourned all of Sweden when three thieves broke into the National Museum, wearing ski masks and armed with pistols and machine guns. The criminals knew exactly what they wanted, having studied the floor plans for months, they went straight to Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait and two works by Renoir, Jeune Parisienne and La Conversation.
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