When Art Thieves Stole Four Andy Warhol Prints, They Didn’t Realize Only Two Would Fit in the Getaway Car

An art heist gone wrong may have left four Andy Warhol screen prints with irreparable damage.

On November 1, robbers broke into the MPV Gallery in Oisterwijk, Netherlands, just after 3 a.m., according to the Art Newspaper’s Senay Boztas. Locals say they heard a loud explosion followed by the sound of an alarm going off. The thieves had set off explosives to break into the building, and they took off with the prints from Warhol’s Reigning Queens series.

Created in the mid-1980s, the series includes portraits of four prominent queens: the United Kingdom’s Elizabeth II, Denmark’s Margrethe II, the Netherlands’ Queen Beatrix and Swaziland’s Queen Ntombi Tfwala. The bright, colorful artworks had been scheduled to go on sale at an art fair in Amsterdam.

Experts say the criminals were sloppy in their execution of the crime and likely didn’t have a comprehensive understanding of what they were getting themselves into.

“I think it was some criminals who are not really specialized in art theft [but] saw an opportunity and thought, ‘Let’s first steal them and afterwards see what we can do,’” art detective Arthur Brand tells the Art Newspaper.

Brand is famous for recovering significant artworks, including a stolen Vincent van Gogh painting wrapped in an Ikea bag, which someone delivered to his apartment last year. That story had a happy ending. But in this case, he adds, “everything went wrong.”

Using explosives in art heists is neither typical nor wise. Surveillance footage shows that the blast may have damaged the artworks. Mark Peet Visser, the gallery’s owner, tells the Associated Press’ Mike Corder that the “amateurish” robbery destroyed his building and damaged several nearby businesses.

When the perpetrators tried to flee with the four artworks, they realized they didn’t fit in the getaway car. They only made away with two of the portraits (Elizabeth and Margrethe), which they had to cut out of their frames. The other two (Beatrix and Ntombi Tfwala) were carelessly discarded on the street.

“At that moment the works are ripped out of the frames … you also know that they are damaged beyond repair, because it is impossible to get them out undamaged,” Visser adds.

The gallery owner tells the Art Newspaper that only a limited number of people knew that the works were at the gallery. While he did not comment on the artworks’ value, another Warhol portrait of Elizabeth sold for more than $850,000 at Toronto’s Heffel Fine Art Auction House two years ago, according to Artnet’s Jo Lawson-Tancred.

Still, the thieves are very unlikely to see that kind of profit. Now that the prints are damaged, they may be worth less. What’s more, Visser tells the Dutch news outlet Het Laatste Nieuws’ Faye van Os, Tom Tacken and Juliette D’Ours that the prints are numbered and cannot be sold on the open market.

“This heist was clearly commissioned by someone who wanted to look at them tonight with a nice glass of wine at home, I think,” he tells the publication, per a translation by Artnet. “What else can they do with them now?”

Earlier this week, police arrested a 23-year-old in connection with the theft, as the AP reports. Officials have not released any information about the whereabouts of the stolen artworks, though Visser tells the news agency that they haven’t been recovered.

Julia Binswanger | READ MORE

Julia Binswanger is a freelance arts and culture reporter based in Chicago. Her work has been featured in WBEZ, Chicago magazine, Rebellious magazine and PC magazine.