Greek police say they found two paintings by 20th-century masters Pablo Picasso and Pete Mondrian, nearly a decade after they were stolen from the country’s largest state art gallery in Athens.
According to the BBC, a statement late Monday night said the two works were in police hands, but did not provide details about their condition or whether any arrests had been made.
The paintings were torn from their frames during a well-organized night robbery at the National Art Gallery on January 9, 2012. The robbers also took a pen and ink drawing by 16th-century Italian artist Guglielmo Cacchia. At first they took the fourth work, also written by Mondrian, but dropped it when they ran.
At the time, police said the robbery was completed in about seven minutes.
The stolen Picasso was a female bust in the style of Cubism, which the Spanish artist presented to Greece in 1949 with a dedication “in honor of the Greek people” for his resistance to the occupying forces of Nazi Germany during World War II.
The thieves also confiscated an oil painting from 1905 depicting the coastal windmill of Mondrian, a Dutch artist famous for his later abstract linear works.