Munch art recovered

2005-03-08 07:16

Edvard Munch's 1915 watercolour The Blue Dress. (Scanpix, AP)

Norway - Three works of art by Norwegian master Edvard Munch - including a unique watercolour entitled The Blue Dress - were recovered less than 24 hours after thieves with crowbars pried them loose from a restaurant's walls, police said.

Authorities also made several arrests in the capital on Monday, including several known criminals, police spokesperson Iver Stensrud said.

He declined to say how many were detained or give details about the condition of the stolen watercolour and two lithographs while the investigation was still pending.

"We can say the artwork has been recovered," he said. "It was just good police work."

Munch's tortured tableaus have proven to be quite a draw for Norway's art thieves. In August, priceless Munch masterpieces The Scream and Madonna were stolen from a museum with guards. They have yet to be recovered.

The three pieces stolen on Sunday night from the restaurant at the upscale Hotel Refnes were valued at a total of about 1.6 million kroner.

The most valuable - the 1915 watercolour Blue Dress - is worth as much as 1 million kroner, Munch expert and auctioneer Knut Forsberg said.

The other two are lithographs include a self-portrait and a portrait of Swedish artist August Strindberg.

Munch developed an emotionally charged painting style that helped launch the 20th Century Expressionist movement. He died in 1944 at the age of 80, having produced some 1 700 paintings and 30 000 prints.

The hotel's owner, Widar Salbuvik, said the thieves used crowbars to pry the artwork off the walls of the restaurant just after it had closed for the night. The hotel is near the city of Moss, about 50 kilometres south of Oslo.

A hotel worker was walking through the restaurant around 22:00 GMT on Sunday and surprised two unarmed men who had torn the pictures and frames from their special security mounts on the walls, police spokesperson Jan Pedersen said.

"They dropped one, and broke the frame and glass, but took the picture," Pedersen said. Police were searching for two dark-haired men believed to be in their 20s, he said.

The August theft of The Scream and Madonna from the Munch Museum raised concerns about security in the art world, as three armed robbers grabbed the valuable pieces in broad daylight.

In 1994, another version of The Scream was stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo and was recovered a few months later in a sting operation.

On the net:

www.munch.museum.no

- AP