Two works by modern masters Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian, as well as a a sketch by Italian Mannerist artist Guglielmo Caccia went missing or were stolen almost nine years ago.
Staffs of National Gallery in Athens were forced to reevaluate security measures at the institution, which owns pieces by El Greco, Rembrandt, and Giovanni Battista, while authorities began the long effort to reclaim the missing works. A new investigation suggests at least one work, Picasso’s Head of a Woman, may still be in the country.
The Cubist work depicts a woman’s bust against a blue background which was painted in 1939. The painting was gifted to the National Gallery by Picasso in 1946 in recognition of Athens’s resistance to Nazi occupation; he inscribed on the back: “For the Greek people, a tribute from Picasso.” Investigators believe the work later went up for sale in the country’s illicit art market for close to $20 million, but couldn’t find a buyer.
Greek police are hoping to find the entire trove and return it to the National Gallery in commemoration of the completion of the institution’s major renovation. The new gallery is scheduled to open on March 25, the 200th anniversary of the successful Greek War for Independence.
Stelios Garipis told Proto Thema that the painting is “a work of incalculable symbolic value for Greece, especially at this time when we are called to resist the pandemic and at the same time to celebrate the reopening of the National Gallery.”