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French court gives a former electrician and his wife a two-year suspended sentence for stealing artworks worth over £40 million A French court has convicted a retired electrician and his wife of concealing 271 stolen artworks by Picasso, and ordered the couple to give them back to the artist's family. The verdict on Friday in the southern city of Grasse wraps up an unusual case centering around works that were unknown to the public for decades and have an estimated worth 60-100 million euros (£43-72 million).

A treasure trove of artworks worth almost £1billion seized by the Nazis and reportedly destroyed in RAF bombing raids during WW2 has been found behind rotting food in shabby apartment in Munich. Experts have hailed the discovery of the 1,500 pictures, thought to have been lost or bombed, as a sensational find. The story of the lost masterpieces of such painters as Pablo Picasso, Renoir, Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall is revealed in this week's edition of Germany's Focus magazine which broke the story of the incredible find by customs officials. Art historians examining the collection claim up to 300...

A Romanian man who has admitted stealing masterpieces by Gauguin, Monet and Picasso, wants to pin the blame on the Dutch museum for failing to protect the works, his lawyer said Tuesday. Radu Dogaru is among six Romanians on trial for the spectacular three-minute heist from the Kunthal museum in Rotterdam in October 2012 which stunned the art world. Despite their value, none of the paintings was equipped with an alarm, Dutch authorities have said.

If you needed more proof that art theft is a futile, dead-end job, look no further than the Kunsthal heist of 2012. After the theft of seven masterpieces worth tens of millions of dollars ——a Picasso, two Monets, and a Matisse, among others—it appears that the mother of one of the suspects said she burned their cache of high-priced art partly because the thieves couldn't find any buyers.

Art scholars had long suspected Picasso was one of the first master artists to employ house paint, rather than traditional artists' paint, to achieve a glossy style that hid brush marks. There was no absolute confirmation of this, however, until now. Physicists at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill., trained their hard X-ray nanoprobe at Picasso's painting "The Red Armchair," completed in 1931, which they borrowed from the Art Institute of Chicago. The nanoprobe instrument can "see" details down to the level of individual pigment particles, revealing the arrangement of particular chemical elements

The Evansville Museum in Indiana corrected their misidentification of a glass piece of art held in storage for 50 years. The rediscovered artwork is a valuable Picasso original gemmaux work, created by baking different pieces of colored glass, titled "Seated woman with Red Hat." Documentation associated with the piece incorrectly indicated it was by an artist named "Gemmaux" with a design inspired by a Picasso oil painting, and the work was kept in storage for decades.

Today, 17 July 2012, is the centenary of the death of the great French polymath Henri Poincaré, once described as the "last of the universalists". His achievements span mathematics (he set the basis for chaos theory), physics (his mathematical methods are still used in studying elementary particles), philosophy (his framework for exploring scientific theories is still controversial) and the psychology of creativity (he studied the workings of the unconscious). Poincaré also acted as a surprising link between Einstein and Picasso, who were both inspired by his best-selling Science and Hypothesis, published in 1902. Working as a patent clerk in Bern,...

Officials at the Menil Collection don't know why a man spray-painted Pablo Picasso's "Woman in a Red Armchair" at the museum, but the act wasn't caught just on surveillance cameras. It also was captured by a bystander with a smartphone camera and subsequently posted on YouTube with a caption naming the alleged perpetrator as a young artist... The damaged artwork, with the spray paint barely dry, was rushed down the hall to the museum's conservation lab, where chief conservator Brad Epley quickly began its repair. The 1929 painting, one of nine by Picasso owned by the Menil, has "an excellent...

The culture war might be likened to fighting a war against a coalition of powers. Imagine WWI-style trench warfare on a long front. In the center of the enemy lines are the forces of moral relativism. These forces oppose the idea that there is a universal moral law. On one flank are the forces of the sexual revolution, including gays, feminists, adulterers, the promiscuous, and the pro-abortion folks. On the other flank are the cultural relativists, and multiculturalists. This camp opposes the ideas of truth, beauty, and intrinsic quality. It seeks to suppress the literary, philosophical, and artistic heritage of...

PARIS (AP) -- A thief stole five paintings possibly worth hundreds of millions of euros, including major works by Picasso and Matisse, in a brazen overnight heist at a Paris modern art museum, police and prosecutors said Thursday. The paintings disappeared early Thursday from the Paris Museum of Modern Art, across the Seine River from the Eiffel Tower in one of the French capital's most chic and tourist-frequented neighborhoods.

His 1932 portrait 'Nude, Green Leaves and Bust' fetches $106.5 million. Some mistresses are more valuable than others. On Tuesday night, Christie's New York sold Pablo Picasso's bold 1932 portrait of his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter, "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust," for $106.5 million, making it the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction. "I think the Picasso illustrates what has been true in good and bad economic times — the very best works of art continue to sell at a premium," said Marc Porter, chairman of Christie's Americas. He said the nine bidders active after the opening bid of $58...

A painting that Picasso created in a single day in March 1932 became the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction on Tuesday night. In an overflowing salesroom at Christie’s, six bidders vied for “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” which depicts the artist’s mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, reclining naked. When the canvas last changed hands, in 1951, it sold for $19,800. But this time, “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust” brought $106.5 million. For 8 minutes and 6 seconds, bidding rose steadily, with five people still competing at $80 million. Nicholas Hall, of Christie’s old master paintings department in New...

Met Visitor's Picasso Stumble is $65 Million Oops: ExpertBy CAITLIN MILLAT Updated 4:30 PM EST, Tue, Jan 26, 2010 This may be the most expensive stumble ever. A Metropolitan Museum of Art visitor who lost her balance and tore a hole in a Picasso work Monday slashed the painting's $130 million value in half, an expert told the New York Post. The 6-inch tear in Picasso's "The Actor" happened after a woman stumbled into the Met work, leaving it with a mark that could mean the painting could never be restored to its original condition, appraiser Gerard van Weyenbergh said....

Here is an interesting video report on seven-year-old British prodigy Kieron Williamson, a young painter being compared to Picasso. He only began painting at age six, but his work is already drawing the rarified comparisons, and people from all over the world are paying a thousand dollars to own a painting by him. As for his view on his paintings, Williamson said he has no favorite because "they are all good." . . . (VIDEO)

Special forces have recovered a stolen Picasso and arrested a man planning to sell the painting during a raid of his house in southern Iraq, Iraqi police said Wednesday. The painting, "The Naked Woman," apparently had been among the artwork looted from Kuwait during Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion, said police spokesman Maj. Muthana Khalid. It was seized Tuesday during a raid on the house belonging to the suspect near the mainly Shiite city of Hillah, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) south of Baghdad. Khalid said the man was trying to sell the painting for $450,000, but some Iraqi experts who...

PARIS – A red notebook of 33 pencil drawings by Pablo Picasso has been stolen from a specially locked glass case in the Paris museum that bears the painter's name, authorities said Tuesday. The book is believed to be worth 8 million euros ($11 million), a police official said. The theft took place between Monday and Tuesday morning at the Picasso Museum, removed from a glass case that "can only be opened with a specific instrument," the Culture Ministry said. A museum employee discovered the notebook missing Tuesday morning from the second-floor display case, the police official said anonymously, as...

PARIS (Feb. 28) - At least two Picasso paintings, worth a total of nearly $66 million, were stolen from the artist's granddaughter's house in Paris, police said Wednesday. The paintings, "Maya and the Doll" and "Portrait of Jacqueline," disappeared overnight Monday to Tuesday from the chic 7th arrondissement, or district, a Paris police official said. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said they were worth nearly $66 million. The director of the Picasso Museum, Anne Baldassari, said several paintings and drawings were stolen from the home of Diana Widmaier-Picasso....

Steve Wynn's Bad Dream Vegas mogul sues Lloyd's over $54 million damaged Picasso claim JANUARY 11--Months after he accidentally poked a hole in a Picasso painting, casino magnate Steve Wynn today sued Lloyd's of London for failing to pay off a $54 million insurance claim. Wynn, who purchased the painting "Le Reve" for $48.4 million in 1997, contends that the painting was worth $139 million when, on September 30, he "accidentally placed a tear" in it while showing the work (pictured at right) to friends visiting his Las Vegas office. According to Wynn's U.S. District Court complaint, a copy of...

Pablo Picasso's "dream" painting has turned into a $139 million nightmare for Steve Wynn. In an accident witnessed by a group that included Barbara Walters and screenwriters Nora Ephron and Nicholas Pileggi, Wynn accidentally poked a hole in Picasso's 74-year-old painting, "Le Reve," French for "The Dream." A day earlier, Wynn had finalized a record $139 million deal for the painting of Picasso's mistress, Wynn told The New Yorker magazine The accident occurred as a gesturing Wynn, who suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, an eye disease that affects peripheral vision, struck the painting with his right elbow, leaving a hole the...

WHEN student Ambroise Vollard first saw a Cézanne painting in a Paris dealer's window, he regretted bitterly that he couldn't afford it. "I thought to myself how nice it must be to be a picture dealer," he wrote later. "Spending one's life among beautiful things like that." Vollard, who within a few years did indeed become a picture dealer, soon lacked neither beautiful things nor interesting people around him. In 1895, he hosted the first major exhibition of Paul Cézanne's work. He gave Pablo Picasso his first Paris show in 1901 and Henri Matisse his first solo exhibition in 1904....