A print by Pablo Picasso, initially stolen from a Milwaukee gallery in 2018, was found by a landlord and turned in to the local police.
The print is a work titled “Torero,” completed in 1949, and was stolen on Feb. 16, 2018, before being turned in to a police station on Aug. 5, the Milwaukee Police Department said in a release.
Landlord Tim Dertz told WISN-TV that while going through an apartment following an eviction, he found the painting “in a back bedroom behind a door … it looked like it had been there a long, long time because it had collected tons of dust across the top of it.”
Mr. Dertz brought in an antiques expert to check out the print and other items left behind by the tenant, at which point the expert noticed that the print was a Picasso. When Mr. Dertz looked up the work to see how much it could be worth, he found out that it had previously been stolen.
The “Torero” print, one of 30 of its kind, was originally commissioned for sale at a gallery owned by Bill DeLind, who told The Associated Press Friday that when police called him to let him know it had been found, “I was overwhelmed. I was at a loss for words. It was an overwhelming moment for me.”
The late co-owner of Mr. DeLind’s gallery, Michael Goforth, was deeply invested in trying to recover the print prior to his death earlier this year. Mr. DeLind told WITI-TV that Goforth “was so invested in this particular piece. It was an obsession with him that he wanted it back.”
The painting is worth around $50,000 due to the story of its theft and rediscovery, Mr. DeLind told the AP, and was originally appraised to be worth between $35,000 and $50,000. He said the print will remain with police while the client who commissioned it for sale deals with their insurance company.
“I don’t know what kind of hope you can ever expect to have – if this is a 1 in 100, 1 in a thousand or million – so yes, don’t give up hope,” Mr. DeLind told WITI-TV.
The Milwaukee Police Department is still investigating the case, though police officials told WISN-TV that the statute of limitations for theft and other property crimes is generally six years.
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