Mystery over Picasso notebook theft
Updated on 10 June 2009
A Pablo Picasso sketchbook worth several million pounds has been stolen from a museum in Paris.
There is no sign of a break-in at the Picasso Museum in the Marais area of the city, yet the red notebook containing 33 pencil drawings disappeared on Monday night, police said.
The sketchbook has been valued at around £8 million.
France's culture minister, Christine Albanel, said the notebook - dating from 1917-1924 and with the word "Album" inscribed in gold on the front - would be hard to sell and called the theft "bizarre to say the least".
There was no surveillance system in the room where the notebook was displayed, a police official said.
The Culture Ministry said the notebook was removed from a glass case that "can only be opened with a specific instrument". The case has since been filled with other display items.
Ms Albanel suggested there are still no known leads to the culprits.
Anne Baldassari, who is head of the Picasso Museum, said she ruled out a commissioned theft, "because it's very difficult to perpetrate physically or you need insiders," she said, without elaborating.
And Picasso's grandson, Olivier Picasso, has said the notebook was of immense historical value as it contained the first impressions of the artist, something that was unique.
In August 2007, French investigators recovered two Picasso paintings and a drawing worth more than £40.4 million stolen from the home of the artist's granddaughter in an overnight heist six months earlier.
Two of three suspects later arrested were carrying the rolled-up canvases as police closed in.
Police had been tipped off by an art dealer after the theft at the luxury Paris apartment of Diana Widmaier-Picasso and suspected the thieves were looking to sell their loot.
In 1994, seven Picasso paintings worth an estimated £26.9 million were stolen from a Zurich gallery. They were recovered in 2000 and a Swiss man and two Italians were jailed for the theft.
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