A Picasso painting belonging to a Saudi was stolen 20 years ago

Thanks to the researches of a Dutch art expert, the Netherlands made a Picasso painting worth 25 million euros stolen 20 years ago in a yacht from the south of the Netherlands. La France.

The table is entitled "Portrait of the pond" and is also called "the bust of a half-woman (Dora Mar)". She is one of the mistresses and servants of the famous Spanish painter (1881-1973).

The painting, which was part of Picasso's private collection until his death, was stolen in 1999 on a Saudi yacht anchored at Antibes, near Cannes. After two decades of futile research, observers and art collectors thought they would no longer see this missing painting.

However, the Dutch art expert Arthur Brand, nicknamed "Indiana Jones Art" for his achievements as an investigator, got his hands on after a four-year investigation. The brand told AFP that the oil painting had been delivered in mid-March to an insurance company that did not want to be named.

In 2012, Brand learned that a "stolen yacht" was used as currency for illegal transactions in the Netherlands. "I was ignoring the painting in question," he said. In mid-March, two men working for a Dutch company opened the door of his office in Amsterdam at night.

"They had Picasso, worth 25 million euros wrapped in black sheets and garbage bags," Brand said. The expert pointed out that the businessman was "shocked" because he did not know he stole a painting. Brand immediately informed the Dutch and French police.

The brand gained worldwide fame in 2015 after the discovery of two bronze horses in Germany thanks to the signature of Josef Thurach, one of the official sculptors of the Third Reich, who decorated the entrance to the Chancery German under Hitler in Berlin and disappeared after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In November, after many years of research, the Cypriot authorities authorized the restoration of an exceptional Byzantine mosaic, a fresco stolen from a church in Cyprus after the Turkish invasion of 1974.

The theft of Picasso's painting, estimated at around $ 7 million at the time, prompted owners of luxury yachts based in Kut d'Azur to review the safety rules applicable to their boats. After the 1999 robbery, the French police investigations yielded no results and the file was kept.

The painting then began to pass from one person to another in the informal economy "and was often used as a guarantee, especially in the drug trade and arms sales," he said. said Brand. "Since the theft, the owner of the painting has changed about 10 times," he said, adding that he had to act quickly to get it "because his situation was probably bad."

After removing the bag and bags, Brand, passionate about the art, hung up in her apartment "to become one of the most expensive apartments in Amsterdam" for one night.

An expert of Picasso's work from the Pais Gallery in New York went to Amsterdam to check the authenticity of the painting in the presence of Dick Ellis, a retired British researcher and founder of the Scotland Yard Art and Archeology Unit.

Ellis is known to have found several stolen works from the "scream" of Edvard Monk, stolen in Oslo, Norway in 1994.

"There is no doubt that this is Picasso's stolen painting," said Ellis, who runs a London-based consulting firm. A representative of the insurance company, who owns the stolen painting, went to Amsterdam.