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Eugene

(62,658 posts)
Mon Jan 28, 2019, 08:42 AM Jan 2019

Thief steals painting from Moscow gallery as witnesses watch

Source: The Guardian

Thief steals painting from Moscow gallery as witnesses watch

Man took painting from wall and strolled out of gallery but picture – and thief – were located a few hours later

Andrew Roth in Moscow
Mon 28 Jan 2019 12.11 GMT

It was an art heist so audacious that it seemed certain to fail. And it failed spectacularly in less than 24 hours.

On Sunday evening, a man in jeans and a dark shirt walked up to a painting by landscape artist Arkhip Kuindzhi in Moscow’s New Tretyakov Gallery and lifted it right off the wall. Then, as others looked on, he grabbed the frame in one hand and strolled out of the gallery.

It took several minutes for museum patrons to realise they had witnessed a theft. One eyewitness said that he had mistaken the thief “for a museum employee”. By the time the alarm was raised, the man had already vanished on to the street.

The painting of the Ai-Petri mountain peak was part of a popular exhibition of landscapes in Moscow, and its theft quickly became a media sensation.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/28/peak-sneak-daring-theft-of-mountain-painting-in-moscow-arkhip-kuindzhi


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