[How Picassos, Matisses,
Monets and other precious masterpieces may have met a fiery fate in a remote
Romanian village, population 3,400, is something the police are still trying to
understand. The theft has turned into a compelling and convoluted mystery that
underscores the intrigues of the international criminal networks lured by
high-priced art and the enormous difficulties involved in storing, selling or
otherwise disposing of well-known works after they have been stolen.]
By Liz Alderman
 |
Rotterdam Police, via Associated Press
Monet’s “Waterloo Bridge, London," was one of
seven works that were stolen in
October from the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam. MorePhotos »
|
PARIS — To Olga Dogaru, a
lifelong resident of the tiny Romanian village of Carcaliu, the strangely
beautiful artworks her son had brought home in a suitcase four months earlier
had become a curse.
No matter, she said,
that the works — seven in all — were signed by Picasso, Matisse, Monet,
Gauguin, Lucian Freud and Meyer de Haan. Her son had just been arrested on
suspicion of orchestrating the art robbery of the century: stealing
masterpieces in a brazen October-night theft from the Kunsthal museum in
Rotterdam.
But if the paintings and
drawings no longer existed, Radu Dogaru, her son, could be free from
prosecution, she reasoned. So Mrs. Dogaru told the police that on a freezing
night in February, she placed all seven works — which included Monet’s 1901
“Waterloo Bridge, London”; Gauguin’s 1898 “Girl in Front of Open Window”; and
Picasso’s 1971 “Harlequin Head” — in a wood-burning stove used to heat saunas
and incinerated them.
Mrs. Dogaru’s confession
could be pure invention, and the works could be discovered hidden away
somewhere. But this week, after examining ashes from her oven, forensic
scientists at Romania’s National History Museum appeared on the verge of
confirming the art world’s worst fears: her tale may be true.
In total, the works were
valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, but for curators and art lovers,
their loss would be irreplaceable.
“Unfortunately, I have a
bad feeling that a huge and horrible crime happened, and the masterpieces were
destroyed,” Ernest Oberlander-Tarnoveanu, the director of the National History
Museum, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. If so, he added, it would be
“a barbarian crime against humanity.”
How Picassos, Matisses,
Monets and other precious masterpieces may have met a fiery fate in a remote
Romanian village, population 3,400, is something the police are still trying to
understand. The theft has turned into a compelling and convoluted mystery that
underscores the intrigues of the international criminal networks lured by
high-priced art and the enormous difficulties involved in storing, selling or
otherwise disposing of well-known works after they have been stolen.
As in so many such
mesmerizing capers, including an estimated $350 million worth of diamonds stolen from the Brussels airport recently,
the theft itself is often easier than the fencing. It is a quandary, along with
the lengths a mother might go to protect her son, that could help explain Mrs.
Dogaru’s desperate actions, if she did what she says she did.
Mr.
Oberlander-Tarnoveanu declined to say whether it had been established that the
ash found in Mrs. Dogaru’s oven, which the police turned over to his
investigative team, was in fact the burned remains of the stolen canvases.
“That is for legal authorities to determine,” he said.
But he said his team had
discovered material that classical French, Dutch, Spanish and other European
artists typically used to prepare canvases for oil painting, as well as the
“remains of colors, like red, yellow, green, blue, gray.” The pigments included
cinnabar, chromium green and lazurite — a blue-green copper compound — as well
as tin-lead yellow, which artists stopped using after the 19th century because
of toxicity. In addition, copper nails and tacks made by blacksmiths before the
Industrial Revolution and used to tack canvas down were found in the debris.
Such items would be nearly impossible to fake, he said.
It would be harder to
verify if two other works that were stolen, by Picasso and Matisse, were
burned, Mr. Oberlander-Tarnoveanu said. More delicate than the other five
works, the two were done in pastels and colored ink on paper. “Unfortunately,
it’s impossible to assess those remains,” he said, “because the burned paper
was basically turned into pure carbon.”
The stolen works were
part of a collection amassed by a Dutch investor, Willem Cordia, that had been
exhibited for only a week at the Kunsthal. The police say three men, led by Mr.
Dogaru, 28, broke in through an emergency exit and snatched the seven works
from the wall in just under two minutes. Mr. Dogaru was arrested in late
January in Carcaliu.
The other stolen works
were Monet’s “Charing Cross Bridge, London,” painted in 1901; Matisse’s
“Reading Girl in White and Yellow” from 1919; and de Haan’s “Self-Portrait”
from 1890; and Freud’s 2002 “Woman With Eyes Closed.”
On Thursday, Gabriela
Chiru, a spokeswoman for the Romanian public prosecutor, said the authorities
were still investigating Mrs. Dogaru’s claims and were waiting to examine the
findings produced by the museum’s forensics team. The investigation was
expected to take months to complete.
In the absence of more
definitive news, Dutch newspapers and some art dealers have speculated that the
plunder might have been a contract job orchestrated by underworld figures, with
the thieves picking their targets well ahead of time.
What is clear is that
the thieves appeared to have been familiar with the security system at the
Kunsthal. Shortly after 3 a.m. on Oct. 16, they deactivated it for a few
minutes, then broke the lock on an emergency door without triggering alarms,
the Dutch police said. The museum’s camera system showed two men entering and
leaving in less than 96 seconds, carrying unusually wide backpacks stuffed with
the works.
Little is known about
what followed, although the Dutch police have said that the works appeared to
have been taken directly to a home in Rotterdam.
At some point after
that, the Romanian police said, the works made their way to Carcaliu, which Mr.
Oberlander-Tarnoveanu, the national museum director, described as “a remote and
poor village.”
In late January, the
Romanian police raided the homes of Mr. Dogaru and several relatives and
acquaintances. Jeichien de Graaff, a spokeswoman for the Rotterdam public
prosecutor’s office, said Mr. Dogaru and several other men had been under
investigation on other unspecified charges, “and then the Romanian authorities
discovered they might be involved in the art theft in Rotterdam.”
Referring to the
Dogarus, Mr. Oberlander-Tarnoveanu said, “It seems they were not very honest,
because apparently a lot of members of the family had a long judicial history.”
Mr. Dogaru’s arrest
appeared to have spurred his mother into action. In her statement to the
police, Mrs. Dogaru said she panicked when she realized the works would be used
as evidence against her son. With officers combing the village, she told the
authorities that she had looked frantically for places to hide the works, which
were all in a large plastic bag.
She hid them in various
places, including her sister’s home and her garden. Then, she said, she buried
them at the village cemetery. But that did not end her anxiety, she told the
police.
Fearful that the works
could still be discovered, “an idea sprang into my mind,” she told the police,
that if they were not found, there would be no evidence against her son and his
friends.
In her statement, Mrs.
Dogaru said she lighted a fire in the stove and went to the cemetery to get the
works. “I put the whole package with the seven paintings, without even opening
it, into the stove, and then placed over them some wood and my plastic slippers
and waited for them to fully burn,” she said. “The next day I cleaned the
stove, took out the ash and placed it in the garden, in a wheelbarrow.”
If her story is true,
“then it has extinguished the last remaining glimmer of hope we had that the
paintings might be returned,” said Mariette Maaskant, a spokeswoman for the
Kunsthal. “We’ve been profoundly distressed by the theft, and the probability
of the works being burned only emphasizes the futility of the act.”
Mr.
Oberlander-Tarnoveanu said he was trying to stay positive, though his team’s
findings looked grim.
“I am holding out hope
until the last moment,” he said, “because, you know, we need to keep at least
some hope alive.”
George Calin contributed reporting from
Bucharest, Romania, and Georgi Kantchev from Paris.
