Picasso and Portinari Paintings Stolen, Uninsured

Paintings Patricia and I viewed just a week ago by Pablo Picasso and Cândido Portinari were reported stolen in an art heist from the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) on Paulista Ave on Thursday at dawn.

The paintings stolen, Picasso's blue period 1904 Portrait of Suzanne Bloch (see left) and Brazilian painter Cândido Portinari's 1939 O Lavrador de Cafe (The Coffee Worker) are valued by Christie's at between 50 and 116 million dollars. In an earlier blog (Vidas Secas) I wrote about Portinari's large three panel paintings but also recall vividly his depiction of the coffee worker with his massive forearms and incredible earth gripping feet.

Police are interviewing all 140 museum staff about their possible knowledge of the heist, searching for clues of a plan being hatched prior to the thief itself. The heist went down at approximately 5 AM precisely during the guard shift change. Over the last couple of months, 13 prints of paintings by masters in MASP's collection had been reproduced on glossy stock as posters in Brazil's daily newspaper Folha de São Paulo one of the two largest circulation newspapers in the country. The posters were intended to raise pubic visibility for the museums permanent collection.

Apparently, three men captured on security video cameras, boldly ran across the open plaza beneath MASP at dawn, leaped over the glass barrier and then gained access to a stairwell using a tire iron and jack. The jack was used pry under and raise a steel door (as shown in this picture from the scene). A fourth man remained outside the museum communicating by cell phone. The museums alarmed failed and the thieves escaped inside 5 minutes. The paintings, the musuem staff speculated were grabbed because they were small and easily lifted from the walls and carrried out.

Thursday's robbery is the first art heist in the 60 year history of MASP. The modern art museum was closed Thursday to aid in the investigation of the heist. The museum has reported that the paintings are not insured against thief.

MASP has come under a lot of criticism for not insuring their permanent collection valued at more than $1 billion. Many of the critics leveling their disbelief may not fully understand how difficult and costly it is to procure such insurance for a collection whose value is in a constant state of flux. To put a value on a Picasso or a Portinari is not as simple as a automobile or a house.

Instead of the millions and millions of dollars MASP would need annually to insure the collection, it is probably better to invest in better security and guard the work against thief than paying out huge insurance premiums. As the museum director Eduardo Cosomano stated, the work is invaluable and an settlement could never adequately compensate for the thief. Monetary compensation for an art thief of this dimension is a bit of an absurdity. Many art collections around the world are not insured at that's not just a third world or Brazilian problem as some of the first critics seem to want to suggest.

Brazil ranks fourth for the highest number of art thefts in the world, after the U.S., France and Iraq, commented Jose do Nascimento Jr., director of museums at Brazil's Institute of Heritage and National Arts.

While police felt the thieves might be in the employ of an art collector of dealer targeting the Picasso and Portinari (see right) paintings for a private collection, the museum administration commented that the thieves acted more like amateurs, passing up great works by masters to grab paintings that could be easily carried out. Experts speculated that professional art thieves would not operate in broad daylight and under the recorded eye of security video cameras.

Having just been at the museum and viewing these paintings, the thief feels a little bit closer and raw for both of us.

ADDENDUM: Mauro and Henrique told us by phone that the heist was the third attempt in the last couple of weeks at MASP, the first in October was by a group who tried to overpower a guard who did not have keys to the permanent collection and the second on December 17th thwarded by an alarm. The second attempt was not reported to the police by msueum administration.