From Adelaide Now: Art's a steal at Christmas time
INSTEAD of considering what they've got for Christmas, some art collectors discover just what they've lost.
Christmas has proved an excellent season for great art thefts over the years, prompting the Art Loss Register to put together a list of treasures stolen while everyone was celebrating Christmas. The register is an international agency that tracks down missing artworks.
On Christmas Eve 1985, in Mexico City's National Museum of Anthropology, 140 Mayan and Aztec objects were stolen. That was when the museum discovered its alarm system had not been working for three years. About $40 million of gold and objects are still missing.
On New Year's Eve 1999, a thief cut a hole in the roof of the Ashmolean museum in Oxford, England, and climbed down a rope ladder, timing his break-in with celebratory fireworks for the new millennium to drown out any sounds. The thief made off with a $5 million painting by Paul Cezanne entitled View of Auvers-sur-Oise.
In 2002, Christmas thieves at Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum stole a pair of his paintings after entering through the roof. They set off the alarm system but were gone by the time police arrived. The paintings have never been recovered.
Thieves in La Paz, Bolivia, decided to strip more than 100 religious artefacts from the Church of San Andres De Machaca on Christmas Eve. Art Loss Register has recovered two of the most valuable paintings.
Lord Elgin at Christmas 1798 set in motion a plan to record the Parthenon Marbles by taking plaster casts of them. When he discovered originals that fell off the Parthenon were being used for lime burning, he decided he would take the originals instead. The Elgin Marbles ended up in the British Museum, and the Greek Government is still arguing for their return.
The Art Loss Register says notable examples of stolen Christmas-themed artworks include Caravaggio's Nativity from a Palermo church in 1969. The painting, by one of Italy's greatest old masters, is valued in the tens of millions of dollars and never has been found. It is believed to be in the hands of the Mafia, although one informer says it was eaten by rats and pigs while hidden on a farm.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
England: Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Stolen from Dulwich Park
From Sudan Vision: Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Stolen from Dulwich Park
A Barbara Hepworth sculpture which is insured for £500,000 has been stolen by suspected scrap metal thieves from Dulwich Park in south London.
The bronze piece, called Two Forms (Divided Circle), was cut from its plinth overnight, Trevor Moore of Dulwich Park Friends said.
The price it could fetch as scrap metal would only be a tiny fraction of its value as a complete work.
Southwark Council is offering a reward for the thieves' arrest and conviction.
Mr Moore said it was thought they broke into the park through a gate off the South Circular.
'Sickening epidemic'
The piece was designed in 1969 and has been in the park since 1970.
A Southwark Council spokesman said it had been insured for £500,000.
A Hepworth piece from a collection in Bangor, north-west Wales, sold at Sotheby's last year for £445,250, nearly three times its pre-sale estimate.
Peter John, leader of Southwark Council, said: "The theft of this important piece of 20th Century public art from Dulwich Park is devastating.
"The theft of public art and metal is becoming a sickening epidemic.
"I would ask the Met Police and their metal theft task force to investigate this theft as a matter of urgency and would ask anyone with any information about the whereabouts of the sculpture to contact us or the police."
Barbara Hepworth was one of the 20th Century's most accomplished sculptors.
After meeting fellow artist Henry Moore at art college in Leeds, the two young students went on to create an international alliance with some of the world's leading artists including Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brancusi. This led to the moment when British sculpture joined the international avant-garde.
Hepworth's modernist abstract sculptures were inspired by the rolling hills of the West Riding where she was brought up. Her great innovation was to pierce the sculptural form; to make a hole right through the body of the sculpture.
Within months, Moore was doing the same and a new language for sculpture was created which continues to reverberate today.
The work that has been taken is a very good example of the revolutionary aesthetic style she developed.
Simon Wallis, director of the Hepworth Wakefield, a gallery which celebrates the work of the renowned sculptor, said: "There's no doubt it is a very significant work from the latter part of her career.
"This piece from 1970 was one of those powerful monumental late bronzes.
"It's an important piece and a very beautiful piece, and beautiful to see it in that outdoor setting.
"That's one of the reasons it's so sad that someone's whipped it for the scrap metal. It will be irreplaceable."
Southwark Council is offering a reward of £1,000 for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the thieves.
The theft comes a day after Scotland Yard launched its first dedicated unit to tackle the growing problem of metal thefts.
The crime is believed to cost about £700m a year.
Dame Barbara Hepworth, who died in 1975 in a fire at her studio in St Ives, Cornwall, is considered to be one of the UK's most important modern sculptors, with her work displayed in museums and public spaces around the world.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Friday, December 23, 2011
The man who saved The Resurrection
From BBC News: The man who saved The Resurrection
A chance discovery has brought to light the little-known story of how a British Army officer risked a court martial in wartime Italy to save a painting the author Aldous Huxley once described as "the greatest picture in the world".
I opened a dead man's suitcase in Cape Town and was transported from today's Africa, via World War II Italy, to Renaissance Tuscany.
Inside I found a story of high art, bravery and love, all the more powerful because it is a story not widely known.
I was on Long Street, a boisterous city-centre shopping artery, exploring the upper floors of Clarke's, a venerable bookshop staffed by bibliophiles who lovingly tend roof-high displays of new titles.
Climb up the stairs at the back and you enter a booky world almost extinct in today's era of online, search-engine rigour.
Here second-hand works await discovery, all meticulously catalogued, some preciously protected in glass-fronted cabinets.
Staff walk to and fro across creaking floorboards and up half sets-of-stairs linking a maze of attics, all crowded with books.
Graham Greene was my research target, more specifically his links with Tony Clarke, founder in 1956 of what is arguably Africa's finest bookshop.
Clarke died in the 1980s but his effervescent successor, Henrietta Dax, allowed me to look through his remaining papers, higgledy-piggledy in a brown leather case.
Fighting tradition
Tony Clarke After WWII Tony Clarke founded what is arguably Africa's finest bookshop
Of Greene I found nothing but, as so often with research, the letters, notebooks, diaries and photographs drew me off down another thrillingly unexpected by-way.
The records were of a man who came of age in WWII.
There were doodled maps of El Alamein and photographs of Clarke as a young subaltern sitting smartly to attention in the Middle East in 1942 alongside fellow members of the Royal Horse Artillery.
The RHA is one of the army's smartest units - its gunners fire the ceremonial salutes in Hyde Park - and Clarke belonged to its oldest battery, the Chestnut Troop.
Its fighting tradition is proud, no more so than against Rommel's Afrika Korps and later on the long Allied slog up Italy.
The snapshots of Clarke's campaign are framed in black and white: here lean, sun-tanned Tommies lark about on a Mediterranean beach, there stones ring the grave of a fellow officer, a chum, on an Italian hillside.
A reconnaissance photograph of Monte Cassino shocked me.
Clarke was not involved in the fight to dislodge the Germans from its hilltop monastery but in his diary he describes how shocked he was as he drove underneath ancient walls hideously disfigured by bombardment.
It may have influenced what Clarke went on to do.
As the Allied advance continued, his unit took up a firing position near the town of Sansepolcro.
Unlike other famous Tuscan towns that are perched on hilltops, it lies down in a valley. I went there myself in the 90s and found its location memorably unmemorable.
It was standard then for allied artillery to soften up towns before ground troops went in, and Clarke was the officer responsible for Sansepolcro. His guns dug themselves into their firing pits, his gunners prepared their ammunition stocks.
But then some faint bell rang in his mind, a bell belonging to an age far from the madness of war.
Clarke - English, gay, art-loving - remembered an essay by Aldous Huxley. The author had not been shy with his superlatives, saying he had discovered what he called the world's "best picture".
In fulsome terms, the essay described the incredible power of The Resurrection, a fresco masterpiece by the Renaissance maestro Piero della Francesca.
"We need no imagination to help us figure forth its beauty,'' Huxley wrote. "It stands there before us in entire and actual splendour, the greatest picture in the world."
Clarke may not have remembered every detail of the essay but, just as his guns started firing, he remembered one key fact.
The Resurrection was located in Sansepolcro.
I can only imagine the risk he then took by withholding his order to fire.
He later said his commanding officer had come on the radio urging him to get on with it so he had to stall for time, peering at the town through binoculars and assuring his commander that he could see no German targets to go after.
It was a brave action. Had Allied infantry been ambushed as they advanced on Sansepolcro, his court martial would have been brutal.
But, for the love of art, he kept the guns silent. The Germans fled and the town was liberated the following day without any damage to the 500-year-old work of art.
As I left his shop, I thought of Clarke. Nowadays such an act would be spread across newspapers and picked over by script-writers.
But all that remains today is a Sansepolcro suburban street named in his honour, a few references in travelogues written long after the war and a suitcase of memories at the foot of Africa.
A chance discovery has brought to light the little-known story of how a British Army officer risked a court martial in wartime Italy to save a painting the author Aldous Huxley once described as "the greatest picture in the world".
I opened a dead man's suitcase in Cape Town and was transported from today's Africa, via World War II Italy, to Renaissance Tuscany.
Inside I found a story of high art, bravery and love, all the more powerful because it is a story not widely known.
I was on Long Street, a boisterous city-centre shopping artery, exploring the upper floors of Clarke's, a venerable bookshop staffed by bibliophiles who lovingly tend roof-high displays of new titles.
Climb up the stairs at the back and you enter a booky world almost extinct in today's era of online, search-engine rigour.
Here second-hand works await discovery, all meticulously catalogued, some preciously protected in glass-fronted cabinets.
Staff walk to and fro across creaking floorboards and up half sets-of-stairs linking a maze of attics, all crowded with books.
Graham Greene was my research target, more specifically his links with Tony Clarke, founder in 1956 of what is arguably Africa's finest bookshop.
Clarke died in the 1980s but his effervescent successor, Henrietta Dax, allowed me to look through his remaining papers, higgledy-piggledy in a brown leather case.
Fighting tradition
Tony Clarke After WWII Tony Clarke founded what is arguably Africa's finest bookshop
Of Greene I found nothing but, as so often with research, the letters, notebooks, diaries and photographs drew me off down another thrillingly unexpected by-way.
The records were of a man who came of age in WWII.
There were doodled maps of El Alamein and photographs of Clarke as a young subaltern sitting smartly to attention in the Middle East in 1942 alongside fellow members of the Royal Horse Artillery.
The RHA is one of the army's smartest units - its gunners fire the ceremonial salutes in Hyde Park - and Clarke belonged to its oldest battery, the Chestnut Troop.
Its fighting tradition is proud, no more so than against Rommel's Afrika Korps and later on the long Allied slog up Italy.
The snapshots of Clarke's campaign are framed in black and white: here lean, sun-tanned Tommies lark about on a Mediterranean beach, there stones ring the grave of a fellow officer, a chum, on an Italian hillside.
A reconnaissance photograph of Monte Cassino shocked me.
Clarke was not involved in the fight to dislodge the Germans from its hilltop monastery but in his diary he describes how shocked he was as he drove underneath ancient walls hideously disfigured by bombardment.
It may have influenced what Clarke went on to do.
As the Allied advance continued, his unit took up a firing position near the town of Sansepolcro.
Unlike other famous Tuscan towns that are perched on hilltops, it lies down in a valley. I went there myself in the 90s and found its location memorably unmemorable.
It was standard then for allied artillery to soften up towns before ground troops went in, and Clarke was the officer responsible for Sansepolcro. His guns dug themselves into their firing pits, his gunners prepared their ammunition stocks.
But then some faint bell rang in his mind, a bell belonging to an age far from the madness of war.
Clarke - English, gay, art-loving - remembered an essay by Aldous Huxley. The author had not been shy with his superlatives, saying he had discovered what he called the world's "best picture".
In fulsome terms, the essay described the incredible power of The Resurrection, a fresco masterpiece by the Renaissance maestro Piero della Francesca.
"We need no imagination to help us figure forth its beauty,'' Huxley wrote. "It stands there before us in entire and actual splendour, the greatest picture in the world."
Clarke may not have remembered every detail of the essay but, just as his guns started firing, he remembered one key fact.
The Resurrection was located in Sansepolcro.
I can only imagine the risk he then took by withholding his order to fire.
He later said his commanding officer had come on the radio urging him to get on with it so he had to stall for time, peering at the town through binoculars and assuring his commander that he could see no German targets to go after.
It was a brave action. Had Allied infantry been ambushed as they advanced on Sansepolcro, his court martial would have been brutal.
But, for the love of art, he kept the guns silent. The Germans fled and the town was liberated the following day without any damage to the 500-year-old work of art.
As I left his shop, I thought of Clarke. Nowadays such an act would be spread across newspapers and picked over by script-writers.
But all that remains today is a Sansepolcro suburban street named in his honour, a few references in travelogues written long after the war and a suitcase of memories at the foot of Africa.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Oil painting stolen from art gallery
From WPRI.com: Oil painting stolen from art gallery
NEW BEDFORD, Mass. (WPRI) - An oil painting was stolen from an art gallery in New Bedford on Friday.
Sometime between the hours of 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. someone quietly walked into Crowell's Fine Art Galley and Fine Framing Studio on Acushnet Avenue in New Bedford and stole a painting off the front wall.
Police are now investigating the theft and are asking for anyone who may have seen the painting between the time of the robbery and now to contact the New Bedford Detectives Division.
The painting was done this year and is a 20-by-20-inch oil on canvas titled "The Fist, Adamsville, R.I." It's part of an exhibition by artist Evan Laporte; the exhibit is on display until January 31st of next year.
Police had no value for the stolen work of art, and calls to the gallery have gone unreturned; the gallery is closed on Sundays.
NEW BEDFORD, Mass. (WPRI) - An oil painting was stolen from an art gallery in New Bedford on Friday.
Sometime between the hours of 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. someone quietly walked into Crowell's Fine Art Galley and Fine Framing Studio on Acushnet Avenue in New Bedford and stole a painting off the front wall.
Police are now investigating the theft and are asking for anyone who may have seen the painting between the time of the robbery and now to contact the New Bedford Detectives Division.
The painting was done this year and is a 20-by-20-inch oil on canvas titled "The Fist, Adamsville, R.I." It's part of an exhibition by artist Evan Laporte; the exhibit is on display until January 31st of next year.
Police had no value for the stolen work of art, and calls to the gallery have gone unreturned; the gallery is closed on Sundays.
Monday, December 19, 2011
The day of outdoor art exhibits is over
It used to be all an outdoor statue had to worry about was some bratty kid climbing on it and breaking off an arm accidently.
Now, the breaks are being done deliberately.
Thieves - organized thieves - have been going around stealing manhole covers (never mind that leaving a great hole in a street means not a few people have fallen in them and broken legs or even died), lead from roofs, and even entire statues - from where ever they may be - in graveyards, on federal land, anywhere.
And there's probably no way to stop them. The cost to place a guard on every piece of bronze or metal statuary everywhere in the country....unless they're willing to take minimum wage and work day and night....
Camera systems installed might help identify the thieves - but by the time the thief is arrested the priceless work of art (priceless in the sense that the original is the original and can never be replaced!) will be destroyed, melted down for its metal.
Sad days indeed.
Now, the breaks are being done deliberately.
Thieves - organized thieves - have been going around stealing manhole covers (never mind that leaving a great hole in a street means not a few people have fallen in them and broken legs or even died), lead from roofs, and even entire statues - from where ever they may be - in graveyards, on federal land, anywhere.
And there's probably no way to stop them. The cost to place a guard on every piece of bronze or metal statuary everywhere in the country....unless they're willing to take minimum wage and work day and night....
Camera systems installed might help identify the thieves - but by the time the thief is arrested the priceless work of art (priceless in the sense that the original is the original and can never be replaced!) will be destroyed, melted down for its metal.
Sad days indeed.
UK: Artist set to craft replacement for stolen waterfront urn
From the Barrie Examiner: Artist set to craft replacement for stolen waterfront urn
Barrie police continue to investigate after urn stolen from display
By LANCE HOLDFORTH
Barrie police are still looking for the culprits responsible for stealing a bronze urn from a lakeside art installation, but the artist who created it, John McEwen, is in the process of crafting a replacement.
The 200-pound urn was removed from McEwen's Babylon sculpture from the southern shore of Kempenfelt Bay on Nov. 18 after someone cut three support bolts and removed the piece.
"I do think it was a matter of new technology (tools)," McEwen said. "There's all kinds of reasons people steal things from vandalism to beer money."
The MacLaren Art Centre brought the sculpture to Barrie in 2003 as part of the Shoreline exhibit on loan from the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, which was to be removed a week after the urn was taken.
"It was stolen for it's scrap value I assume," McEwen said. "The timing of the theft was too bad because had a week gone by, it would have gone back to the McMichael."
Barrie police estimate the urn is valued at $60,000.
The 20-year-old installation has since been relocated to the McMichael in Kleinburg, and after recent approval, 66-year-old McEwen will begin crafting a replacement urn at his Hillsdale studio.
"The interesting thing about putting something in public is it stays there over time and becomes a part of a person's background," he said. "This is a relatively simple process."
McEwen is known to the international art community for his Searchlight, Starlight, Spotlight sculpture outside the Air Canada Centre in Toronto and his sculpture of a bronze canoe in front of the new Canadian embassy in Berlin, Germany.
The McMichael will add the installation to their outdoor exhibit in the spring after it has been fixed, but CEO Victoria Dickenson said even though McEwen is optimistic, she feels bad about the damage.
"With a sculpture, it's meant to be touched and appreciated and most sculptures are respected by the public," she said. "I can't speak for him (McEwen), but it's always disturbing for an artist to have vandalism on a piece of work."
The theft was a destructive display of misfortune, but Dickenson said she wonders how someone managed to steal such a large item.
"This was very deliberate. This wasn't accidental damage," she said.
"Someone would have had to have taken a truck and more than one person."
Director of development for the MacLaren Art Centre, Sue-Ellen Boyes, said vandalism is a downside of publicly displayed art.
"It's something that happens," she said. "It's an unfortunate and unexpected thing to have happened."
Although many Barrie residents enjoyed the installation before the theft, Boyes said she is relieved McEwen will be able to fix the sculpture.
"I think there is a long history of public art projects all over the world (which get vandalized)," she said. "He will be able to re-cast and re-attach a replacement urn to the piece."
Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 705-725-7025, or Crime Stoppers at 1-888-222-8477.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Cops look for painting after art heist
From WPRI.com TV: Cops look for painting after art heist
$675 oil abstract vanished from gallery Fri.
By Bill Tomison
NEW BEDFORD, Mass. (WPRI) - It may not be the "Mona Lisa" or "The Scream," but 'The Fist" is worth several hundred dollars, and now New Bedford police are on the hunt for an art thief.
Someone stole the painting from Crowell's Fine Art Gallery and Fine Framing Studio on Acushnet Ave. sometime around noon Friday - removing the 20" x 20" oil on canvas right from the gallery wall.
Gallery owner Kate Levin said in a news release Monday that the Evan LaPorte painting -- an abstract work of mostly blue or teal, with greens and reds and yellows -- is valued at $675.
She said the painting - which is about the size of a large pizza box - vanished sometime between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. It was being featured in a solo exhibition by LaPorte which is running until Jan. 31.
Police are looking for the painting, and if you have any idea on its whereabouts you're asked to call the New Bedford Police Department at (508) 991-6300.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Time Keeps On Slipping Into the Future
Sorry for the dearth of posts recently...I've been working on a project, wanted to devote all my time to it, and kept telling myself...it'll be done today so I can get back to blogging here tomorrow.
The next day it was... okay, it's definitely going to get done today....
Well, today it is done... so back to posting here on a daily basis tomorrow. (With the first post appearing tomorrow afternoon while I'm watching football!)
Thanks for your patience.
The next day it was... okay, it's definitely going to get done today....
Well, today it is done... so back to posting here on a daily basis tomorrow. (With the first post appearing tomorrow afternoon while I'm watching football!)
Thanks for your patience.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Art Terminology: Acanthus and Altarpiece
Acanthus
Architecture: A prickly plant of the Mediterranean region with large, deeply cleft and scalloped leaves which are freely imitated on the capitals of the Corinthian and Composite orders and often used, in varying degrees of abstraction, to ornament moldings, brackets, friezes and so on.
Altarpiece
Architecture: A painted or sculpted panel or shrine placed behind and above an altar, also called a "reredos" or "retable." 14th and 15th century altarpieces are often very complicated, consisting of several panels or separate groups of sculpture.
An altarpiece consisting of three panels is called a tryptych, when it has more than three panels it is called a "poylptych". Some altarpieces have a decorated base, or pedella, and have "shutters" or "wings" which can be opened to reveal a series of "transformations" or "stages" to reveal other paintings or sculptures. The shutters are usually painted in rather subdued colors on the outside - monochrome imitations of sculpture ("grisailles") being common in northern Europe - but when opened up for the feast days of the Church, they offer a brilliant and sumptuous display pf color.
____________
Bibliography
From Abacus to Zeus, A Handbook of Art History
James Smith Pierce, 1977
Architecture: A prickly plant of the Mediterranean region with large, deeply cleft and scalloped leaves which are freely imitated on the capitals of the Corinthian and Composite orders and often used, in varying degrees of abstraction, to ornament moldings, brackets, friezes and so on.
Altarpiece
Architecture: A painted or sculpted panel or shrine placed behind and above an altar, also called a "reredos" or "retable." 14th and 15th century altarpieces are often very complicated, consisting of several panels or separate groups of sculpture.
An altarpiece consisting of three panels is called a tryptych, when it has more than three panels it is called a "poylptych". Some altarpieces have a decorated base, or pedella, and have "shutters" or "wings" which can be opened to reveal a series of "transformations" or "stages" to reveal other paintings or sculptures. The shutters are usually painted in rather subdued colors on the outside - monochrome imitations of sculpture ("grisailles") being common in northern Europe - but when opened up for the feast days of the Church, they offer a brilliant and sumptuous display pf color.
____________
Bibliography
From Abacus to Zeus, A Handbook of Art History
James Smith Pierce, 1977
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Art Terminology: Abacus and Abbey
Abacus
Architecture: The uppermost part of a capital, forming a slab on which the architrave rests.
Abbey
Architecture: A monastery governed by an abbot. The church of an abbey is called an "abbey church" and is usually planned to allow for the special requirements of the monks such as a deep choir or many altars.
____________
Bibliography
From Abacus to Zeus, A Handbook of Art History
James Smith Pierce, 1977
Architecture: The uppermost part of a capital, forming a slab on which the architrave rests.
Abbey
Architecture: A monastery governed by an abbot. The church of an abbey is called an "abbey church" and is usually planned to allow for the special requirements of the monks such as a deep choir or many altars.
____________
Bibliography
From Abacus to Zeus, A Handbook of Art History
James Smith Pierce, 1977
Friday, December 2, 2011
Prized works by Czech painter Emil Filla stolen
From ArtHostage.com: Prized works by Czech painter Emil Filla stolen
Prague. One of the Czech Republic’s most famed Cubist painters is dominating the country’s headlines this week. Emil Filla, a leader in Prague’s avant-garde and an early Cubist painter, has been at the centre of three separate stories, including a theft of his works and a record setting auction .
First, on Friday 18 November, four of Filla’s works were stolen in the early morning hours from the Peruc Chateau, located about 50 km northwest of Prague, which houses a permanent exhibition of Filla’s works and where the artist spent several years after the second world war. According to Alica Stefancikova, the exhibition’s curator, the alarm system, which is directly connected to the Peruc police station, sounded at 4:04am on Friday morning. Although police arrived at the chateau within ten minutes, the thieves had already fled the scene.
The four oil paintings, all from the 1940s with the exception of one earlier painting, are estimated to be worth 50m to 80m Czech crowns, and the paintings are uninsured. “We preferred to invest in the preventative protection of the collections,” Stefancikova told The Art Newspaper after the theft. Besides an attempt to steal the works in 1992, when the perpetrator was arrested, no other attempts have been documented. The stolen works include Still Life With a Fruit Basket and Clarinet (Zatisi s klarinetem a kosikem ovoce), 1948, Woman with Picture Cards (Zena s kartami), 1946, Still Life with a fruit bowl (Zatisi s misami ovoce), 1946, and Blind man (Slepec), 1926.
According to reports in the Czech press, several frames were discovered in the nearby village of Bysen on Sunday 20 November. Whether they belong to the missing paintings is yet to be determined, according to Stefancikova.
At the same time, one of Filla’s works set a record on 20 November as one of the top 20 most expensive paintings ever sold at auction on the domestic scene. Dating from 1911, Filla’s Comforter (Utesitel) went for 11m crowns, almost double the starting price, at a sale held by Galerie Art Praha at the Hilton Hotel in Prague. Last year, Filla’s Still Life with a Bottle of Cherry (Zatisi s lahvi Cherry), 1914, sold for 16.25m crowns, ranking it as the highest-priced Filla work sold at a domestic auction. His Sculptress in the Studio (Socharka v ateleru) was among several Czech avant-garde works that brought Sotheby’s in London more than £11m, double the estimate, at an auction in June of this year.
Finally, on Tuesday 22 November, Filla’s 1913 canvas Two Women (along with The Dancer, a painting by Vincenc Benes and a bronze statue by Otto Gutfreund) was returned to the Czech Republic after having been seized while on loan in Vienna this past May as a result of a multi-billion crown claim against the state by a blood plasma firm. An Austrian appeals court refused to recognise the claim. Although the Filla painting has been returned to the Moravian Gallery in Brno (and the two other works to the National Gallery in Prague), Diag Human, the blood plasma firm who is behind the almost 20-year-long arbitration dispute, may challenge the final verdict according to a report on Cesky Rozhlas (Czech Radio).
As a result of the claims made by Diag Human, the Czech Ministry of Culture issued a ban on the loaning of art and cultural artefacts to international exhibitions this spring. Beyond a loss to the public sector of 1.2m crowns in six months, according to the Czech Radio report, the Czech Republic will be unable to participate in 58 international exhibitions in London, Paris and Houston, among other cities, which were slated to receive more than 1,000 works as loans this year and in 2012.
Prague. One of the Czech Republic’s most famed Cubist painters is dominating the country’s headlines this week. Emil Filla, a leader in Prague’s avant-garde and an early Cubist painter, has been at the centre of three separate stories, including a theft of his works and a record setting auction .
First, on Friday 18 November, four of Filla’s works were stolen in the early morning hours from the Peruc Chateau, located about 50 km northwest of Prague, which houses a permanent exhibition of Filla’s works and where the artist spent several years after the second world war. According to Alica Stefancikova, the exhibition’s curator, the alarm system, which is directly connected to the Peruc police station, sounded at 4:04am on Friday morning. Although police arrived at the chateau within ten minutes, the thieves had already fled the scene.
The four oil paintings, all from the 1940s with the exception of one earlier painting, are estimated to be worth 50m to 80m Czech crowns, and the paintings are uninsured. “We preferred to invest in the preventative protection of the collections,” Stefancikova told The Art Newspaper after the theft. Besides an attempt to steal the works in 1992, when the perpetrator was arrested, no other attempts have been documented. The stolen works include Still Life With a Fruit Basket and Clarinet (Zatisi s klarinetem a kosikem ovoce), 1948, Woman with Picture Cards (Zena s kartami), 1946, Still Life with a fruit bowl (Zatisi s misami ovoce), 1946, and Blind man (Slepec), 1926.
According to reports in the Czech press, several frames were discovered in the nearby village of Bysen on Sunday 20 November. Whether they belong to the missing paintings is yet to be determined, according to Stefancikova.
At the same time, one of Filla’s works set a record on 20 November as one of the top 20 most expensive paintings ever sold at auction on the domestic scene. Dating from 1911, Filla’s Comforter (Utesitel) went for 11m crowns, almost double the starting price, at a sale held by Galerie Art Praha at the Hilton Hotel in Prague. Last year, Filla’s Still Life with a Bottle of Cherry (Zatisi s lahvi Cherry), 1914, sold for 16.25m crowns, ranking it as the highest-priced Filla work sold at a domestic auction. His Sculptress in the Studio (Socharka v ateleru) was among several Czech avant-garde works that brought Sotheby’s in London more than £11m, double the estimate, at an auction in June of this year.
Finally, on Tuesday 22 November, Filla’s 1913 canvas Two Women (along with The Dancer, a painting by Vincenc Benes and a bronze statue by Otto Gutfreund) was returned to the Czech Republic after having been seized while on loan in Vienna this past May as a result of a multi-billion crown claim against the state by a blood plasma firm. An Austrian appeals court refused to recognise the claim. Although the Filla painting has been returned to the Moravian Gallery in Brno (and the two other works to the National Gallery in Prague), Diag Human, the blood plasma firm who is behind the almost 20-year-long arbitration dispute, may challenge the final verdict according to a report on Cesky Rozhlas (Czech Radio).
As a result of the claims made by Diag Human, the Czech Ministry of Culture issued a ban on the loaning of art and cultural artefacts to international exhibitions this spring. Beyond a loss to the public sector of 1.2m crowns in six months, according to the Czech Radio report, the Czech Republic will be unable to participate in 58 international exhibitions in London, Paris and Houston, among other cities, which were slated to receive more than 1,000 works as loans this year and in 2012.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Case of the missing tusk reopened
From the Marlborough Express: Case of the missing tusk reopened
The Marlborough Express is reopening a cold case of the elephant tusks which were reportedly stolen from a Marlborough art gallery.
The 1992 theft was mentioned in a news article last week, and piqued our curiosity. However, no-one in the Marlborough arts scene we have contacted has been able to shed much light on the subject.
One of the tusks was unearthed by police at the Kapiti home of convicted drug dealer Jack Webber, 49, also known as "Island Jack" and now presumed drowned.
An inquest is to be held into his death on December 19, along with that of his friend Hamish Kronfield, who went missing in May 1999 when their boat overturned near Passage Rocks, of the eastern side of Kapiti Island.
"Island Jack" first hit the headlines when he and two associates were arrested in 1995 on drugs and firearms charges.
The Dominion article said police also dug from the lawn a 40-kilogram elephant tusk, one of a pair stolen in 1992 from a Marlborough art gallery.
While on home detention, Mr Webber was caught trying to smuggle six packets of heroin into Rimutaka Prison.
He later supplied an undercover officer with morphine and cannabis worth more than $10,000. He was jailed again in 1996.
At the time, police said he had a criminal record going back to 1969, but "to friends and acquaintances he was a gentleman".
Chief coroner's office spokesman Steve Corbett said the inquest, to be held on December 19, was one of several that were part of a joint initiative by the chief coroner and the police missing persons unit to review older files to check if there was any new information and wrap them up.
If you have information about the tusks call reporter Simon Wong on 03 520 8926 or email swong@marlexpress.co.nz.
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