PUBLISHED: 07:49 EST, 18 July 2012 | UPDATED: 08:02 EST, 18 July 2012
A Matisse painting stolen more than ten years agohas been recovered in a sting by FBI agents.
Yesterday a man and a woman tried to sell the1925 painting ‘Odalisque in Red Pants’to undercover federal agents posing as art collectors at the Loews Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida.
The masterpiece, worth nearly £2million, had been on display in the Sofia Imber Contemporary Art Museum in Caracas, Venezuela, but in 2003 it was discovered to be a fake.
Recovered: Odalisque in Pants, painted by Henri Matisse in 1925, had been missing for over 10 years when it was discovered the painting in the museum in Caracas, Venezuela was a forgery
The FBI have not yet named the pair, or revealed whether they are implicated in the theft of the painting, but its recovery is big news for those in the art world.
Agents from Interpol, the FBI and Venezuelan, British, Spanish and French police have been searching for the 1925Henri Matissepainting for nearly 10 years, but no one knew where it was.
‘Odalisque in Red Pants’had been on tour to other museums several years previously and at some point been switched with a forgery.
TheSofia Imber Contemporary Art Museum had bought the original painting in 1981, but how and when the painting was replaced with a replica, and by whom are questions still unanswered.
Scene of the sting: The swanky Loews hotel on Ocean Drive, Florida, where undercover FBI agents posing as art collectors nabbed a man and a woman selling the Matisse painting that had been missing for over 10 years
The director of Caracas Museum, Rita Salvestrini, suggested that the switch many years ago had been done by an insider. She said in 2003, when the forgery was first discovered, ‘There had to be inside complicity. You can’t just make the switch freely inside the museum.’
There are clear differences between the original and the replica, which Salvestrini explained at a press conference: The fake has a dark shadow behind the dancer, while the original does not. In the lower right hand corner, the genuine painting has seven green stripes. The fake has six.The Sofia Imber museum purchased the painting from the Marlborough Gallery in New York in 1981 for $400,000. It has been on display ever since, except for a brief loan for a Spanish exhibition in 1997.
Spot the difference: The fake, right, has a dark shadow behind the dancer, while the original, left, does not. In the lower right hand corner of the genuine painting there are seven green stripes. The fake has six.
Portrait of the artist: Henri Matisse (1869 ¿ 1954) was a French artist known for his use of vibrant colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship
Caracas newspaper El Mundo speculated that the Matisse may have been swapped during the 1997 Spanish exhibition loan. Other clues suggest the painting may have been stolen in 2000.
In November 2002, Miami art collector Genaro Ambrosino heard the piece was up for sale and contacted Rita Salvestrini.
She pointed out that the painting was in the museum and was not for sale, but after experts examined it they declared it aforgery.
Salvestrini has subsequently discovered that over the years ahandful of people in the art world had heard rumours that ‘Odalisque in Red Pants’ was being offered for sale.
Some gallery owners had been approached and been offered the painting but investigators have yet to name anyone thought to be complicit in the painting’s theft and recent reappearance.
‘The people who knew that the piece was being circulated around the world never informed us,’ said Salvestrini. ‘The thing is, it didn’t occur to anyone the piece could have been authentic.’
‘Odalisque in Red Pants’ is not the only painting by Henri Matisse to have been logged in the FBI’s National Stolen Art File (NSAF) database of stolen art and cultural property:
In 2006 the French painter’s 1904 masterpieceLuxembourg Gardens was stolen from aRio de Janeiro museum during the carnival, along with paintings by Picasso, Dali and Monet.
A SERIES OF SUCCESSFUL STINGS: THE FBI ART CRIME TEAM EXPLAINED
The FBI’s rapid deployment Art Crime Team was created in 2004 and is composed of 14 special agents, each responsible for art and cultural property crime cases in specific geographic regions.
The Art Crime Team is coordinated through the FBI’s Art Theft Program in Washington, D.C. where agents receive specialized training in art and cultural property investigations.
Once trained they can assist in art-related investigations worldwide in alongside foreign law enforcement officials and FBI legal attaché offices.
Stolen objects are submitted for entry to theNational Stolen Art File (NSAF) by law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad. When an object is recovered, it is removed from the database.
Since its inception, the Art Crime Team has recovered more than 2,650 items valued at over $150 million including:
Francisco de Goya’s 1778 painting Children With a Cart. The painting was stolen while being transported from the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio to the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Around 100 paintings stolen from a Florida family’s art collection in a fine art storage facility, including works by Picasso, Rothko, Matisse and others, were recovered from Chicago, New York and Tokyo.
Rembrandt’s Self Portrait (1630) was recovered in a sting operation in Copenhagen carried out in cooperation with ICE and law enforcement agencies in Sweden and Denmark. The FBI had also previously recovered Renoir’s The Young Parisian. Both paintings had been stolen from the Swedish National Museum in Stockholm in 2000.
700 pre-Colombian artifacts were recovered in Miami in a sting operation in coordination with the Ecuadorian authorities.
Three paintings by the German painter Heinrich Buerkel (1802-1869), stolen at the conclusion of World War II and consigned for sale at an auction house near Philadelphia in 2005.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2175275/Stolen-Matisse-painting-recovered-Undercover-FBI-agents-recover-stolen-Odalisque-Red-Pants-Florida-sting.html#ixzz214jMX0of
