Stolen Henri Matisse Painting To Be Returned To Caracas

CARACAS, Venezuela ? A painting by Henri Matisse stolen more than a decade ago from a museum in Venezuela will soon be returned to the country, officials said Friday.

The painting, "Odalisque in Red Pants," is to be returned from the United States within three to five weeks, said Raul Grioni, president of Venezuela's Cultural Patrimony Institute.

Grioni told The Associated Press that the painting will arrive at the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art once officials complete necessary requirements to ship it and verify its authenticity.

Venezuelan authorities say the 1925 painting, which is valued at about $3 million, was stolen from the Caracas museum in 2000.

It was found in July when a couple tried to sell it to undercover FBI agents at a hotel in Miami Beach. The two were sentenced last month in U.S. federal court in Miami for attempting to sell the stolen work.

Cuban Pedro Antonio Marcuello Guzman of Miami was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison, and Mexican Maria Martha Elisa Ornelas Lazo was sentenced to one year and nine months. Both pleaded guilty to the charges in October.

Court records show that FBI agents and an informant posing as art dealers were negotiating with Marcuello for the sale of the painting for $740,000 in Miami last year. Prosecutors said Ornelas brought the painting to Miami from Mexico City.

Grioni said the U.S. State Department contacted Venezuelan officials to begin the process of returning the Matisse painting after the trial concluded.

Venezuelan prosecutors say the painting was stolen from the museum in 2000. It was discovered to be missing in 2002 after Venezuelan collector Genaro Ambrosino sent an email to various people expressing surprise and outrage that the work had been put up for sale in Miami.

The authorities then detected that the original work had been swapped and replaced with a copy.

The U.S. government recently asked Venezuela for documents proving that it owns the painting and that it hasn't received any insurance payment, and the foreign ministry will provide those documents soon, Grioni said.

Venezuelan officials also plan to hire a French expert to travel to Miami and help confirm the painting's authenticity, he said. He said government officials believe it is the painting "but we want to take precautions."

When the painting was taken out of the country remains a mystery, and Grioni said Venezuelan officials plan to ask U.S. authorities to assist with their investigation.

He said the country is taking precautions to prevent similar thefts.

• The United States: February 1988

  18 paintings including two by Fra Angelico, were stolen from New York art dealer Colnaghi's. The thieves broke in through a skylight, a manourve that could have gone very wrong, sending the thieves flying down the stairwell. Once inside, the thieves trod on canvases and failed to choose the most valuable paintings, but still made off with enough to be worth $6 million. Only 14 of the works were recovered. PICTURE: <a href="Credit: Fra Angelico [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons" target="_hplink">Wikimedia </a>

• Mexico: December 1985

  140 objects, including Maya and Aztec Gold, Mixtec and Zapotec sculptures, were stolen from Mexico City's National Museum of Anthropology on Christmas Eve 1985. The alarms had not been working for three years, thieves simply removed the glass from the cases. PICTURE: <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aztec_ear_flares,_Art_Institute.jpg" target="_hplink">Wikimedia</a>

• The United Kingdom 2003

  Not all art thieves are financially motivated. Thieves who stole Van Gogh's The Fortification of Paris with Houses, Picasso's Poverty and Gauguin's Tahitian Landscape from the Whitworth gallery in Manchester hid the works behind a public toilet. A note pinned to the tube said they stole the paintings to highlight security gaps at the gallery. How public spirited of them. IMAGE: <a href="http://uploads4.wikipaintings.org/images/vincent-van-gogh/fortifications-of-paris-with-houses-1887(1).jpg!Large.jpg < wikipaintings" target="_hplink">Wikipaintings</a>

• The United Kingdom: August 1961

  A rich American collector, Charles Wrightsman, bought Goya's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington and planned to take it to America with him. Due to public outrage, the government matched the sum ($392,000) and it was hung in the National Gallery. It was stolen three weeks later, and the thief demanded a ransom, which was not granted. The Duke was later deposited in the left-luggage office of New Street station in Birmingham. A 61-year-old retired truck driver confessed to the theft. IMAGE:<a href="Credit: Francisco de Goya [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons" target="_hplink"> Wikimedia Commons</a> <strong>UPDATE:</strong> A previous version of this slide incorrectly stated that the artwork was still at large, when in fact the painting has been restored. We apologize for the error.

• The United Kingdom, 2003

  Thieves overpowered the guide and chucked the painting the Madonna of the Yarnwinder by Leonardo Da Vinci out of the window, telling tourists "Don't worry love, we're the police. This is just practice". The painting was found at the offices of one of Scotland's most successful law firms. Several solicitors were arrested, some of whom were said to be scrutinizing a contract which would have allowed 'legal repatriation' of the painting. The painting was recovered and returned to the Buccleugh family. IMAGE: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Leonardo_da_vinci,_madonna_dei_fusi_di_Drumlarimng_castle,_lost.jpg" target="_hplink">Wikipedia</a>

• 2010 France

  A masked thief dressed in black stole five paintings from Paris's Musee d'Art Moderne, including Pablo Picasso's Le Pigeon aux Petits-Pois and La Pastorale by Henri Matisse. Collectively the paintings are worth about ?100m. The CCTV system had failed, the intruder had trigged no alarms and the night watchmen hadn't noticed the break in until it was too late. The CCTV had been reported as broken, but hadn't been fixed adequately. IMAGE:<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/63/Picasso_-_Le_pigeon_aux_petits_pois_1911.jpg" target="_hplink"> Wikimedia Commons</a>

• Sweden: December 2000

  Thieves seized a Rembrandt self portrait and two Renoir paintings from the National Museum in Stockholm. One thief threatened an unarmed guard with a submachine gun while the other two grabbed paintings. They scattered nails on the floor to slow down pursuit and got away on a motorboat. The thieves went on to request $10 million per painting in ransoms through a lawyer who was then arrested in connection with the robbery. The paintings are still missing. IMAGE: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rembrant_Self-Portrait,_1660.jpg" target="_hplink">Wikipedia</a>

• The United States: March 1990

  Thieves made off with $300 million worth of art works, including The Concert by Vermeer and works by Rembrandt and Manet. Two men in police uniforms turned up at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner museum claiming to be responding to a disturbance. Once let in, guards were handcuffed and locked in a cellar while the thieves went to work. Attempts to recover the paintings - for a $5 million reward - failed.

• France 1911

  The most audacious art theft of all time, Vincenzo Peruggia, an employee of the Lourve, walked out of work one day with the Mona Lisa under his coat. The theft remained undiscovered for most of the next day, as workers thought it was being photographed. Peruggia believed the Italian painting should be in Italy, and two years later tried to sell it to the Uffizi in Florence. IMAGE: PA

• Oslo, Norway: August 2004

  The Scream is one of the most stolen paintings of all time, made worse because there are four different versions. Most recently, it was stolen from the Munch museum in Oslo, where it was uninsured because curators felt the painting was 'priceless'. There were no demands for ransom but the painting was recovered 2 years later. IMAGE: PA

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/08/stolen-henri-matisse-painting-recovered_n_2647542.html

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