PARIS | A thief stole five paintings valued at more than $100 million, including major works by Picasso and Matisse, in an overnight heist at a Paris modern art museum with a broken alarm system, officials said Thursday.
The paintings disappeared early Thursday from the Paris Museum of Modern Art, across the Seine River from the Eiffel Tower in one of the French capital’s most chic and tourist-frequented neighborhoods.
The museum’s alarm system had been broken since March 30 in some rooms, Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe said in a statement. The security-system operator ordered spare parts to fix it, but had not yet received the equipment from the supplier, the statement said.
The museum reopened in 2006 after spending $18.4 million and three years upgrading its security system.
Christophe Girard, deputy culture secretary at Paris City Hall, said a single masked intruder was caught on a video surveillance camera.
Investigators are trying to determine whether the intruder was operating alone, Mr. Girard told reporters, who suggested the heist was carried out by a very “sophisticated” team or individual. He said three guards were on duty overnight, but “they saw nothing.”
The intruder entered by cutting a padlock on a gate and breaking a museum window, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
The prosecutor’s office initially estimated the five paintings’ total worth at as much as $613 million, but later downgraded that to $112 million.
He said “Le pigeon aux petits-pois” (“The Pigeon with the Peas”) an ochre and brown Cubist oil painting by Pablo Picasso, was worth an estimated $28 million, and “La Pastorale” (“Pastoral”), an oil painting of nudes on a hillside by Henri Matisse, about $18.4 million.
Alice Farren-Bradley of the Art Loss Registry in London said the Paris theft “appears to be one of the biggest” art heists ever, considering the estimated value, the prominence of the artists and the high profile of the museum.
The other paintings stolen were “L’olivier pres de l’Estaque” (“Olive Tree Near Estaque”) by Georges Braque; “La femme a l’eventail” (“Woman with a Fan”) by Amedeo Modigliani; and “Nature morte aux chandeliers” (“Still Life with Chandeliers”) by Fernand Leger.
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