Two portraits of José Capelo by Francis Bacon. Stolen in 2015.
From the friendship with Francis Bacon, Jose Capello left as many as five of his portraits. His treasures, which skyrocketed in value, the Spaniard recklessly kept at home. And when he only had to go to London, the canvasses disappeared. A year later, three were found, the police arrested more than ten people, but the case has not been solved yet. Portrait of another friend Bacon, Lucien Freud, a couple of years, led the rating of the most expensive works of art sold at public auctions: a triptych “Three sketches for a portrait of Lucien Freud” purchased for $ 142.4 million (Christie’s, 2013).
“The wounded table” by Frida Kahlo. The location is unknown since 1955.
Bernard Zilberstein photographed Frieda Kalo at the “Wounded Table” in 1941, a year after finishing the work on the painting. Photo: Edward B. Silberstein / Cincinnati Art Museum
How it was possible to steal the “Wounded Table” unnoticeably is hard to imagine. Work impressive size (1.2 by 2.4 m) is written on a tree, not on the canvas, so that it can not be cut out of the frame and rolled into a roll. But the fact remains: the picture, which is called the “Holy Grail” for students of Kalo’s creativity, mysteriously disappeared on the way to Moscow. A convinced communist, the artist gave it to the Soviet Union, but our officials did not appreciate the work, categorizing them as “samples of decadent bourgeois art.” Anyway, the “wounded table” after the death of Kalo in 1954 managed to reach the exhibition in Warsaw, and then evaporated. Recently, a Mexican art critic has stirred up the world art community, saying that he attacked the track of the “wounded table”. While they are looking for him, a record-worthy work of the artist, whose great retrospective is being successfully held now at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, there remains the picture “Two Naked in the Woods” – the new owner paid $ 8 million for it.
“View Auvers-sur-Oise” by Paul Cezanne. It was stolen in 2000.
A pledge of successful abduction is a surprise. For example, New Year’s Eve, when no one cares about what is happening in the museum. So decided the robbers, aiming at one of the iconic paintings of Cezanne – “View Over-sur-Oise”, and not lost. The landscape was abducted from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford on the night of January 1, 2000. Without special effects was not done: intruders, after entering the museum, threw a smoke bomb. While the protection of the noise of New Year fireworks on the street trying to understand what happened, the kidnappers and the trace caught cold. The most expensive painting for Cezanne today is not a landscape, but a still life: “The curtain, the jug and the compote” was sold for $ 60.5 million (Sotheby’s, 1999).