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| Fernand Leger. Still Life with a Candlestick. Stolen 2010. by Travis Simpkins |
“Still
Life with a Candlestick” by Fernand Leger: Stolen on May 20,
2010
by Travis Simpkins
The Painting:
In
Fernand Leger's 1922 painting, Still
Life with a Candlestick,
interlocking vertical and horizontal formations insert a rational and
corrective element to the Cubist style. Primary colors, combined with
sharp black & white areas, create an interesting visual interplay
of disassembled form and pattern. Typical of Leger's works from the
1920's, the painting projects a sense of formidable stability to an
otherwise mundane subject matter.
The Theft:
On
May 20, 2010, a lone thief pulled off one of the biggest art thefts
in history. Five works, valued at upwards of €100m,
were stolen from the Musée
d'Art Moderne in Paris. The filched paintings were well-known works
by top-tier artists: Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, Leger and Braque.
Lax
security and careless blunders were largely to blame for the success
of the heist. It was discovered that the paintings were gone around
7:00 a.m. The three guards on duty that night were dumbfounded,
telling investigators that they “saw nothing.” A closer look at
the museum's security system and the events of that shift painted an
unsettling picture. Inspection of the security alarms revealed that
the motion detectors that covered the area in which the theft took
place had been non-functional for nearly two months, since March 30.
The alarms points were malfunctioning, causing false alarms, and the
management decided to disable them to alleviate their frustration.
Spare parts to make repairs had been ordered, but had not arrived
yet.
On
the night of May 20, all of the exterior CCTV cameras were focused
towards the roof of the building, leaving the guards blind to street
level activity. At about 4:00 a.m., the thief sheared a padlock and
smashed through a first floor window to gain entry to the Musée
d'Art Moderne. Once inside, the masked “burly” thief passed by an
array of interior CCTV cameras, which nicely recorded his nonchalant
movements as he perpetrated the crime. The thief spent about 15
minutes removing the five canvases from their frames, and he placed
them all together in a large single bundle before exiting from the
same window. French investigators theorize that the guards were
sleeping, or otherwise distracted, in order to have missed the entire
crime playing out on their monitors. The
Brigade de Répression du Banditisme believes that the thief acted
alone.
In
2011, a suspect told police that he had thrown the five paintings in
the garbage and that they were destroyed by a trash compactor.
However, this claim is unsubstantiated.
The
five masterpieces are unsellable and have not been recovered.
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| French Police investigate the 2010 Paris Museum of Modern Art Heist |
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| The 5 paintings stolen from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris |
