His testimony in court lasted an hour. Eleven years after breaking National Gallerydeclared “theft of the century”, 50-year-old George Sarmantzopoulos he again introduced himself as her lover artdenying he ever wanted or tried to sell them paintings which he received, including his work Picasso. “I am not a professional thief,” he objected. “My passion was to get two or three projects, and I wouldn’t have left if I didn’t get them.” He was given six years probation. The court ruled as a limiting condition to keep him under electronic surveillance, which had been imposed since last summer.

At yesterday’s trial, witnesses’ testimonies and the defendants’ apologies once again underlined the insufficiency of the security measures that existed at that time in the National Gallery. At the same time, the district attorney, in his testimony, questioned the profile of the collector and art lover, supported by the defendant and his defense.

Chronicles

In the early morning of January 9, 2012, an attacker managed to get inside the museum through an unsecured balcony door. He fooled the guard by causing a false alarm and managed to get away with his booty. The robbery deprived the National Gallery’s permanent collection of important items, “female head” Pablo Picasso, “Windmill Stutter” Piet Mondrian and a drawing from the early 17th century titled “Saint Diego de Alcala in ecstasy with the Holy Trinity and symbols of the passions” by the Italian artist Guglielmo Caccia (Moncalvo).

“He let out loud cries when I saw him, as if he was giving a signal to someone in front to leave,” one of the two guards on duty on the night of the theft testified, but the criminal assured that he had no accomplice.

Giorgos Charmantzopoulos was arrested in June 2021, confessed to his act and pointed out to the police the place where he hid the stolen goods in a stream in Porto Rafti. One of the police officers involved in the investigation testified yesterday that two paintings by Picasso and Mondrian were found covered in nylon packaging and wrapped in duct tape. They were in large polyester briefcases similar to those used by architects. Upon their discovery, according to the testimony of a policeman, the defendant fell to the ground and burst into tears. Beginning his apology, Charmantzopoulos apologized “to the Greek people and the National Gallery”. He said he stopped going to school after his second year of high school and then worked as an oil painter. After 2004, he collaborated with the architect and gradually, according to him, collected his own collection of private works of “unknown artists”. In 2009 he immigrated to England. “In 2011, I had the bad idea to acquire two very valuable works and add them to my personal collection. I thought that maybe in such a wrong way I could also make my dream come true. I often visited the National Gallery, admired many works, including El Greco,” he said. He described how his shadowing lasted six months, mentioned that he sat in the courtyard and watched the movements of the guards, their shifts and even counted the time that it took everyone to move between floors.“I came to the conclusion that the entire gallery was guarded by two people and it would not be difficult,” he explained.

According to him, the theft happened on a random night in January 2012. He had construction tools, a screwdriver and a chisel with him. While he was hiding in the yard, he smoked two or three cigarettes and threw the cigarette butts into the empty bag that was with him so as not to leave any traces by which he could later be identified. He said he was wearing gloves and a hat. Using, he said, his knowledge of the profession of an oil painter, he could distinguish which wall was brick and which was drywall, and where there were joints, that is, a weak point through which he could enter the museum. “It was a wild liana, I was in the room for seven minutes and I can’t believe how I managed to hold out for so long,” he said of the security measures. According to him, he got specific projects by chance. “I did not know Mondrian, I saw a beautiful creation, took it off and put it in a bag,” he said.

“Stop Thief”

Earlier, one of the guards on duty that night told the court how he tried to restrain him when he noticed him. “Stop, thief,” I said, and chased after him, he testified. “And you couldn’t catch him in one fell swoop?” asked the presiding judge. “I slipped and hit my knee and it disappeared. He let out loud screams when I saw him, as if he was signaling someone ahead to leave,” the guard replied.

However, Charmantzopoulos insisted that he acted alone, without an accomplice, while denying the fact of persecution. He stated that he hid the works of Picasso and Mondrian in his uncle’s apartment in Perisso, in a room that was always locked. He added that whenever he returned to Greece from abroad, he took two pictures to admire, and that they were always there before he took them to a stream, a month before his arrest.

“Bloody Moncalvo” and Thriller in Florence

Of the works that disappeared that night, not a single one was restored. Giorgos Sarmantzopoulos told the court that during his escape attempt, he cut and wiped his bloodied hand with a Moncalvo drawing. He then hurriedly stuffed it into his pocket and flushed it down the toilet when he said he found it torn to pieces.

OUR “K” revealed in 2020 that an almost identical design was to be auctioned by Pandolfini in Florence in 2019 but was withdrawn. It was noticed by the art critic Serena d’Italia, who reported it to Marilena Casimati, an art historian and former curator of the National Gallery. Ms. Casimati then offered to go to Italy for an autopsy. The Ministry of Culture replied to “K” that Interpol was contacted, but it was not established that this was the same work as the stolen one, and therefore no return process was carried out, nor was a Greek expert sent. The same was repeated by the legal adviser of the Gallery in court. Testifying yesterday, lawyer and art collector Stelios Garipis said the work could have been damaged before it was sold, causing confusion, and cited a digital analysis by Erik Postma, a professor of artificial intelligence at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. from two images.

Efi Agafonikou, head of the National Gallery’s Collections, Museums and Art Planning Authority, in her testimony questioned the profile of the art lover presented by the defendant. “He would respect him even if there was blood on him,” he said of Moncalvo’s design. “A person who loves art will first think about the work, and then about himself. He left them so long in the ravine, under what conditions.

The District Attorney raised the same question. “You have shown yourself to us as a collector and made a huge logical leap. From the silver painters you moved on to Picasso. It’s like you’re telling us that I sing in a box and then I’m going to go to La Scala in Milan,” he commented.
The former partner from the Netherlands, whom Charmantzopoulos told about his act, did not appear in court and did not testify. Last March, she testified to an investigator, alleging that the perpetrator was also involved in obtaining other stolen works, Picasso and Monet, from Rotterdam. The defendant denied any connection to the specific case and called the testimony false. His lawyer, Sakis Kehagioglu, argued that his client’s confession was evidence of his remorse and that without his offer, the jobs would not have been found. The court recognized as a mitigating circumstance good behavior after the act. During one of the breaks in the process, before the verdict was announced, the guard and the robber who had deceived him were photographed together. “If I had a flashlight that night, I would have thrown it at you to stop you,” the guard told him. A commemorative image eleven years after the “theft of the century”.

Picasso’s gift to the Greek people

Maros Vasiliadou

You can see them, among important works of Western European art, in the room located on the second floor of the National Gallery. Two paintings, The Woman’s Head by Pablo Picasso and The Windmill by Piet Mondrian, have returned to the permanent collection of the Gallery and have been restored after conservation.

“Female Head” – a portrait of the photographer Dora Maar, companion of the Spanish artist in the period 1936-1943.

For the first time, Picasso’s painting “Woman’s Head” was presented to the public in 1949 at the French Institute in Athens. The painting, Picasso’s tribute to the Greek people for their courageous resistance during the Nazi occupation, was part of a gift from French artists and consisted of 28 paintings, 6 drawings, 6 engravings, 4 sculptures and 2 books by famous artists such as Matisse, Bonnard and others. According to curator Zina Kaludi, the work is a portrait of the photographer Dora Maar, Picasso’s companion from 1936-1943.

The portrait is shown in a photograph from an atelier in Ruyan in 1940, where the couple took refuge when Paris was occupied by the Germans. Dora Maar was the photographer who captured with her lens the entire process of creating the work “Guernica” (1937), while in her mindset she was a type of “weeping woman” for Picasso. Two and a half years after “Guernica”, in “A Woman’s Head” there is the same color perception that expresses the pessimism of the Second World War period.

More than three decades passed before the 1949 donation was again presented to the Greek public. The work remained on display for some time before returning to storage, resurfacing again in 2007 for a month when the National Gallery, participating in the 100th anniversary celebrations of the French Institute, re-displayed the donation. The next and last presentation of Maar’s portrait to the public took place in 2011.

The works of Piet Mondrian, stored in the National Gallery, belong to the first period of the artist’s work, before he developed the theory of neoplasticism, which he later created. However, these two oil sketches from 1905 – one depicting a typical farm near Amsterdam, the other a Stammer windmill located along the current river Gaasper Trekvaart – herald the artist’s transition from expressionism to abstract painting.