Andy Warhol paintings were reportedly badly damaged while being loaded into a vehicle during an attempted robbery.
An art gallery in the south of the Netherlands was the scene of a failed robbery on Friday morning.
Thieves broke into the gallery by breaking through the door in the morning and stole a number of works from American artist Andy Warhol's famous series of screen prints. The thieves had difficulty loading the works into the vehicle and left two of the stolen paintings behind.
Two of the works were reportedly found badly damaged in the street during the failed robbery.
The gallery's owner, Mark Peet Visser, said the thieves tried to steal four works from Warhol's 1985 series called 'Reigning Queens', which includes portraits of the queens of England, the Netherlands, Denmark and Swaziland at the time.
Visser said the robbery, which took place at the MPV Gallery in the town of Oisterwijk in the early hours of Friday, was caught on security cameras and described the incident as "amateur work".
“Their entry was so violent that the entire building was completely destroyed,” Visser said, noting that nearby stores were also damaged. “So they did that part of it well, very well actually. Then they run to their vehicle with the artworks, but they realize they can’t fit them in the vehicle. That’s when the artworks are ripped out of their frames. You know they’re damaged beyond repair because you can’t get them out without damaging them.”
Visser declined to put a value on the four signed and numbered works, which he plans to sell as a set at an art fair in Amsterdam later this month.
The Het Loo Palace Museum in the Netherlands is set to host an exhibition of Andy Warhol’s “Reigning Queens,” a series of 16 rare screen prints of four monarchs: Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Beatrix, Queen Margrethe II and Queen Ntombi Tfwala, made in 1985.
The exhibition was billed as the last opportunity to see Warhol’s iconic series for at least five years. The collection was to be stored in 2025 due to the fragility of the material. The thieves disappeared with the portraits of Elizabeth II and Margrethe II.
While forensic experts examined the badly damaged gallery, police appealed for witnesses.
Source: https://tr.euronews.com/kultur/2024/11/01/hollandada-basarisiz-soygun-hirsizlar-andy-warhol-eserlerine-zarar-verdi