Grafica Fidalga in São Paulo

Picasso and Portinari Paintings Recovered

Photo by: Marlene Bergamo/Folha Imagem

Two masterpiece paintings stolen nineteen days ago just before Christmas from Sao Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) were recovered today. The report of the paintings recovery came just a few hours ago. Brazilian police reported that they had arrested two men and recovered the invaluable and uninsured pantings by Pablo Picasso and Cândido Portinari.

The paintings were returned to MASP with an escort of armored police vehicles, overhead helicopters and as officers of the state police walked into the museum carrying the paintings, they were met by applause from the staff. MASP will reopen on Friday with the Picasso and Portinari back on the walls where they hung before the thief.

Police feared that the paintings were stolen on contract to an art collector and quickly whisked out of the country to avoid detection. However, the paintings were found in Ferraz de Vasconcelos, a metropolitan area of Sao Paulo where the two men were arrested. The paintings appear to be in good condition although no assessment was reported of possible damage or if the captured paintings are the original works and not stand-ins.

The "Portrait of Suzanne Bloch" by Pablo Picasso is estimated to be worth 50 million dollars, and "The Coffee Worker" by Brazil's Candido Portinari is estimated at nearly six million dollars. Both works are important in the canon of works by the two artists. Neither painting was insured, as are any of the paintings in the collection of MASP, prompting a nation debate about the security and administration of Brazil's premier modern art museum collection valued at more than $1 billion dollars.

Estado de S. Paulo newspaper reported MASP officials received two ransom requests for the paintings, including a letter asking for $10 million during the period they were missing. The paper is now saying that the two suspects in custody say they were offered $2.8 million to undertake the art heist.

Just before the New Year, state police conducting the investigation said that, based on interviews with the MASP staff that the art thieves had an inside collaborator. One of the museum guards encouraged others during the night shift to sleep and not pay attention to the video monitors installed to alert staff to the threat of thieves entering the building or approaching from the surrounding plaza. Whether this information lead to today's capture of the paintings and arrest is not yet known.

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.

Embu Natal das Artes

On Sunday we headed out to Embu just a few miles west of Patricia's home in Taboao de Serra. Embu is the Jesuit settlement constructed beginning in 1553 on a mission to convert local Indians and use them as farm workers in the region. This is one of the earliest settlements that evidentially lead to the huge population of the city of Sao Paulo.

In recent years Embu has been revived by Feira de Artes and Artesanato, a street fair of arts and artisans that make crafts, ceramics, woodcarving, play music with original Brasilian instruments, dancing and foods. Since 1969, the Embu Feira has opened every weekend and the surrounding streets are filled with antique shops and furniture stores.

Feira's are everywhere in Brazil from the inner cities with fruit, produce, meat, and spices to arts and to the villages were you'll find crafts and antiques but Embu is special for its arts and crafts as well as historical significance.

On this particular weekend in December there are special dances and musical groups in celebration of Natal or Christmas. The streets are bristling with shoppers looking for craft items and art to give as Christmas presents. I still find it difficult to image Christmas without the snow or see a heavily clad Santa with white beard and flannel red sleeves and cap and feel he is out of his element.

Patricia's friend and former teaching colleague Andrea is a single mother who lives in Embu with her teenage daughter Miriam. Andrea was first a English student of Patricia's and then they became co-teachers and, as Andrea pointed out, Patricia was her boss.

Andrea's daughter Miriam was very excited to speak with us in English. She is highly motivated to learn English and very much would like to follow in Patricia's footsteps and come to the United States to learn more English. Miriam also wears a kind of scarey tee-shirt with Ozzie Osborn done up with his goth make-up and goolish appearance. These are the kids who love America and find our culture fascinating.

Andrea teaches English in an American Catholic School called Chapel. Most of the Paulista kids who attend Chapel are privileged but Andrea also volunteers her time teaching English to poor children because she believes in committing herself to changing Brazil and providing opportunity to those less fortunate who cannot afford private Catholic education.

On the hill there is a very old Chapel called the Capela Sao Lazaro where Patricia sits on the front stairs of these sky blue painted front with beveled windows and white trim. We are instantly taken back 400 years when this chapel probably rested alone on the steep hill overlooking the valley. The simple Chapel with wood plank benches, floors and doors is closed for renovations at this time. Today small brightly painted buidling is surrounded by nice single family homes, well kept restaurants, and a newly revived nightclub and disco scene in the village of Embu.

Even though we must walk up and down hills that by Minnesota standards would be considered mountains, unlike Sao Paulo that feels like New York or London, Embu makes us really feel like we are in South America among indigenous people with a long history on this continent. Modernity has left the house.

Vidas Secas

In modern Brazilian art there is a generation in the history of this massive country that touched the minds and imagination of all poets, artists, and musicians alike. From 1920 thru the 1950s, a draught struck the Northern regions of Brazil, the rivers dried up and healthy propserous people as well as the poor started to perish.

The Vidas Secas (Dry Lives) contain harrowing stories of entended families that packed their vital belongings and began walking south along the river beds twoard cities like São Paulo.

Not unlike Ireland's potato famine, the Vidas Secas radically altered Brazilian society and remains a perminent mark in the psycological inheritance of its people.

At Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) there is a tryptic of three large paintings Os retirantes by one of Brazil's greatest modern artists Cândido Portinari that if you have one will move your soul. The six foot tall canvases have, for Brazil, the equal impact as, perhaps, Picasso's Guernica has for Spain. Each panel depicts a taddered family of nine walking the dry river bed against a ravaged, desolated horizon and heat scorched earth. The sky is filled with the black shapes of vultures waiting for a meal of human remains. [The first panel is shown here]

In the center panel, the youngest child dies and each family member wails a river of tears resembling stones. Not even their tears produce needed fluid. Portinari´s brush makes you feel their wretched and unbreable loss. The final panel shows the mother fallen to her knees, hands desperately raised, fingers extended as if to ask God to take her too. The child is buried - the exodis goes on.

What strikes me most heavily as I sit for many minutes staring on a benched positioned in front of the three paintings - situated perhaps to cushon the emotional intensity - is when a Brazilian menina, of approximately 10 years old, approaches the canvases. I feel almost as if I want to step forward to cover her eyes as if I have witnessed a grostesque automobile accident with a beheaded body next to the road.

For days following of visit to MASP, I imagine I can see in each heart of the Paulistas I meet the unshakable sorrow of the Vidas Secas.

APOLOGY

Patricia tells me that the Vidas Secas is the title of a required text all Brazilian school kids are required to read by Graciliano Ramos about a family that transverses the Northern river beds for their survival. This families fate is similar to the one depicted in Portinari´s painting except for one detail. It is not a child who dies during the migration, instead the family dog. Still, the death of Baleia (the dog´s name ironically meaning whale) is as devasting for its innocence and pathos.