A 50-year-old artist who stole priceless works of art from the National Gallery in 2012 was sentenced to 6 years in prison by a single-member criminal court.

The 50-year-old oil painter who has remained elusive for a decade confessed in 2021 to being the culprit in the theft of Picasso’s Head of a Woman, Piet Mondrian’s The Mill from 1905, a gift to the Greek people, and a religious-themed painting attributed to Guglielmo Caccia (Moncalvo) XVII century.

The man who claims to have stolen the three works “for the love of art” handed over the first two paintings to the authorities after his arrest in 2021, and regarding the design, he claimed that it was destroyed. The oil painter was found guilty, with a corresponding proposal by the prosecutor of Edra, in the famous case of theft, also committed during an attempt on objects of artistic value that were in a collection on public display in a public building.

They recognized him as a mitigating circumstance

The court recognized good behavior after the act as a mitigating circumstance and suspended the appeal, provided that he would be electronically monitored by a geolocation device (wristband) and prohibited from leaving his home for more than 3 km.

Witnesses from the Museum of Visual Arts, area security guards at the time, a security company security technician, an art conservation expert, and lawyer and art collector Stelios Garipis testified. in a court.

The director of the museum’s collection, Eftikhia Agafonikou, told the court that the value of the painting donated by Picasso to the Greek people for their resistance to fascism was estimated at 2 million euros, the painting by Montriant at 200,000 euros, and the drawing by Moncalvo at 1,000 euros.

An eyewitness reported that the works suffered damage that cannot be seen with the naked eye: “During the inspection, irreversible damage was noticed. The color consistency is broken. He must be in special conditions so that these works are not damaged.

Lawyer and art collector Stelios Garipis testified in court that, in his opinion, “the defendant is not an oil painter. He is a member of an international network. A Dutch detective contacted me and said that he had a lot of information about him… Two works were returned for a reason. It was rumored that the design, which was supposed to be destroyed, appeared for sale in Florence. I contacted the National Gallery to see what action they have taken. The easiest thing was to send the documents and see who got the project. Because it didn’t sell. They didn’t do anything. Subsequently, it was identified by foreign experts, who said that this is exactly the same project. They didn’t do anything from the Gallery… They went from the Gallery to Florence to see the work, if it’s fake? Should they go to the House?”

Apology

Apologetically, the painter described how he entered the museum after half a year of surveillance, emphasizing that the measures were insufficient and that he had no choice but to “get tired”, activating the alarm he had caused, the only guard on duty: “The theft was so simple and stupid that no one could have imagined that this would happen from an ordinary citizen. He had one guard when he should have had five,” he said.

“I broke the window and hit the mark. Within 4 hours after the alarm was triggered, the guards were constantly raised and lowered. I did this until he got tired and fell down. A few minutes later I went with construction tools to break down the door. It has been unlocked! Therefore, there were no signs of hacking.”

The 50-year-old apologized “to the Greek people for the three works I removed” and answered the president’s questions about how he tracked down Picasso and how the Moncalvo project was destroyed. He said that, frightened by the fall of drywall with paintings, he left the room and went upstairs, where “he saw an unattached painting. I saw that no one had come. I looked at the work and found that it was Picasso. I hung the picture. I put it in a bag. I have another picture. I saw a beautiful creation, took it off, also put it in a bag. I didn’t know Mondrian. Suddenly I hear someone shouting: “Thief! Thief!”.

“The guard who said he was chasing me is not telling the truth, he was not allowed to pass.” The defendant said that while trying to pick up another painting, he cut himself and used Moncalvo’s drawing to wipe away the blood.

^{Source: RES-IPE}