Brazilian police arrest one suspect and recover getaway car after eight Matisse engravings and five Portinari works were stolen from a library
SAO PAULO: Police have arrested a suspect in connection with the theft of valuable artworks by Henri Matisse from a library in Brazil’s largest city.
The man was detained in central Sao Paulo after being identified through investigative work and security camera footage of the crime last Sunday.
Authorities had earlier identified one of two suspects and located the robbers’ getaway vehicle, which has been sent for forensic analysis.
Two armed thieves stole eight engravings by the late French master Henri Matisse and five pieces by Brazilian painter Candido Portinari from the Mario de Andrade Library.
The assailants held a security guard and an elderly couple at gunpoint before taking the artworks from a glass display case.
They placed the pieces in a canvas bag and fled through the library’s main exit.
Investigations are ongoing to identify and locate the second suspect involved in the brazen daytime heist.
A video aired by Brazilian news site G1 appears to show one thief carrying several artworks through the street before abandoning them against a wall next to trash.
The stolen works were part of a modern art exhibition titled “From the Book to the Museum,” a collaboration between the library and the Museum of Modern Art of Sao Paulo.
The theft occurred on the final day of the exhibition, which opened in October.
Displayed pieces included cut-paper collages from Matisse’s rare 1947 art book “Jazz,” of which only 300 copies exist worldwide.
Works by Matisse, a giant of 20th-century modern art, regularly sell for millions of dollars at auction.
The five stolen Portinari engravings were illustrations from the 1959 book “Menino de Engenho” (“Plantation Boy”).
Authorities have not yet disclosed the estimated value of the stolen artworks.
The art heist follows a high-profile theft at the Louvre museum in Paris two months ago, where jewelry worth around $100 million was stolen. – AFP
