Five Picasso and Matisse masterpieces are stolen from The Museum of Modern Art, Paris.
A stealthful art raider has fled with five paintings from the Paris Museum of Modern Art in a shocking £430 million art raid. Among the works stolen include celebrated masterpieces by Picasso, Matissse, George Braque, Amedeo Modigliani and Fernand Leger, which were all reported as missing just before 7am this morning.
The pictures have been named as: Picasso's Le Pigeon aux Petits Pois, La Pastorale by Matisse, Braque's L'Olivier Près de l'Estaque, La Femme a l'Eventail by Modigliani and Léger's Nature Morte aux Chandeliers. According to the Brigade de Répression du Banditisme, France's elite police robbery unit, the masked robber made his way into the museum by smashing a window and then slicing the padlock off a grille. The nifty thief was spotted on CCTV climbing in through the window before disabling the museum's security system.
Given that these paintings are so well-known the raider is presumably working on behalf of a private collector or plans to flog his loot on the black market, either way it's a pretty risky business. As the director of the neighbouring Palais de Toyoko put it so succinctly to the Associated Press, "These five paintings are un-sellable, so thieves, sirs, you are imbeciles, now return them."
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