Arya News - Armed robbers strolled through the streets of Brazil carrying “priceless” artworks by Henri Matisse after a brazen gallery heist, CCTV footage shows.
Credit: X/@jornalnacional
Armed robbers strolled through the streets of Brazil carrying “priceless” artworks by Henri Matisse after a brazen gallery heist, CCTV footage shows.
The gunmen held up a security guard and elderly couple before stealing at least 13 artworks from São Paulo’s Mário de Andrade Library, including eight engravings by the French master.
Footage shows the two men hauling a bag containing the artworks away from the exhibition past unassuming pedestrians.
After leaving a getaway car, one of the suspects then carried multiple canvases in his arms before setting them on the side of the road and fleeing, footage released by São Paulo authorities shows.
Another video shows a suspect picking up artworks and crossing the road with them held over their head.
The stolen artwork included works from Henri Matisse’s seminal ‘Jazz’ series
Brazilian authorities said on Monday they had found the “escape vehicle” and that one of the suspects had been arrested, but the artwork has not been recovered.
The raid was carried out on Sunday morning at the Mário de Andrade Library, during viewing hours of a joint exhibition with the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo called “From book to museum”, which showcased more than 30 artists .
Alongside Matisse’s engravings , artworks by Candido Portinari, a Brazilian modernist painter, were also taken, according to Brazilian media.
The thieves reportedly entered the library by the main entrance on Sunday morning and left by the same route before heading towards the nearest metro station.
São Paulo police said the thieves held up a security guard and an elderly couple visiting the library, took the engravings and other items from a glass dome, put them in a canvas bag and fled through the main exit.
The police added that a man had been arrested after being “identified following investigative work and analysis of security cameras that recorded the criminal act”.
One man has been arrested but the art has not been recovered
São Paulo has more than 25,000 surveillance cameras in the city and its Smart Sampa facial recognition system caught one of the suspects on a street near the library.
A statement from the São Paulo government said police were still searching for another suspect and the artworks.
Art experts have said the works are unlikely to enter the commercial market because of their rarity and the attention given to the heist.
The stolen pieces included prints from Matisse’s 1947 book Jazz, which auction house Sotheby’s has described as being among his seminal works. The series was made when he was suffering from cancer and turned from painting and sculpting to collage.
This is not the first time the Jazz works have been stolen. They were taken by an employee without anyone noticing between 2004 and 2006 and replaced with forgeries, according to Brazilian newspaper G1 . They were then found by Argentine police and returned to the library in 2015.
São Paulo’s City Hall said: “Their value is cultural, historical and artistic … economically, they are priceless.”
The heist comes just two months after thieves stole priceless jewels from the Louvre art gallery in Paris, France.
Disguised as construction workers, the culprits needed less than seven minutes to remove eight pieces of the French crown jewels before escaping down a truck-mounted lift and fleeing on scooters.
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