Paris museum burglar grabs $120-million art haul

A lone thief broke into a major Paris gallery and made off with a 120-million-dollar haul of modern masterpieces, including works by Matisse and Picasso, officials said yesterday.

The thief sheared off a gate padlock and broke a window to get into the Musee d'Art Moderne and then disabled the alarm system to carry out the brazen night-time heist. The paintings were found to be missing just before the museum was to open.

The major tourist attraction, near the Eiffel Tower, was sealed off as police sought clues to who was behind the latest stunning robbery that raised new questions about museum security in the French capital.

"According to estimates by the management of the Musee d'Art Moderne, the value of the stolen canvases totals between €90 and €100 million," said a spokesman for Paris city hall, which operates the museum. Police and judicial sources had earlier said the haul was worth €500 million, but art experts said this was unlikely.

"The Picasso might be worth €40 to €50 million, the Braque 10 to 20," said Didier Rykner, editor of the specialist magazine The Art Tribune.

"But in any case, we're talking about a theoretical value, they don't have a market value, because you couldn't openly sell them. They're too well known."

Video surveillance cameras recorded only one person entering through a window. Police gave few other details of what happened, although the city spokesman said an alarm system had been over-ridden.

Besides the Henri Matisse and the Pablo Picasso, works by Georges Braque, Ferdinand Leger and Amedeo Modigliani were also plucked from the walls of the city-run museum, one of the most-visited in the French capital.

The stolen paintings included Picasso's cubist Dove with Green Peas, which the Spanish artist created in 1912, and his French contemporary Matisse's Pastoral from 1905.

The others were Braque's Olive Tree near Estaque, Modigliani's Woman with a Fan and Leger's Still Life with Candlestick.

Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe expressed shock at the theft which he called "an intolerable attack on the universal cultural heritage in Paris."

The burglary is the biggest since four paintings by Cezanne, Degas, Van Gogh and Monet valued at more than €127 million were stolen from a Zurich museum in February 2008.

France has seen a growing number of art thefts in recent months.