Amsterdam — Two works by artist Andy Warhol were stolen overnight from Thursday to Friday from a gallery in the south of the Netherlands, while two other screen prints were abandoned nearby. Thieves used heavy explosives to break into the MPV gallery in Oisterwijk, North Brabant province, and made off with two silkscreen prints depicting former Queens Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Margrethe II of Denmark, the media outlet reported Dutch NOS.
Gallery owner Mark Peet Visser told The Associated Press that the thieves attempted to take four works from Warhol’s 1985 series “Reigning Queens,” which also features portraits of queens of the Netherlands and the small African kingdom of Swaziland. which is now known as Eswatini.
Peter Dejong/AP
Visser told the AP in a telephone interview that the heist was captured on security cameras, and he called it “amateurish” because of the brutal methods used to steal the prints.
“The bombing was so violent that my entire building was destroyed,” he told the news agency. “So they did that part well, too well, actually, and then they ran to the car with the artwork and it turned out that it wouldn’t fit in the car… At that point, the works are torn from the frames and you also know that they are damaged beyond repair, because it is impossible to take them out intact.
Artworks depicting former Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and Queen Ntombi Tfwala of Swaziland were found abandoned in the street.
“The entrance to the gallery was blown out and there was glass all around the building,” the NOS television station said.
The famous Dutch art detective Arthur Brand said “it is strange that explosives were used.”
“It’s not common for art thefts,” said Brand, who has made headlines for recovering art including a missing Picasso and a stolen Van Gogh.
Pop Art pioneer Warhol’s “Reigning Queens” series was on display in the gallery before going on sale at the PAN Amsterdam art fair, which runs from November 24 to December 1.
“The works are worth a considerable amount of money,” gallery owner Mark Peet Visser told local media Omroep Brabant.
Brand, however, told AFP that the stolen artworks were “not unique and there were most likely dozens.”
“It makes it easier to sell than one-off works, but not much easier,” he said.
The MPV Gallery did not immediately respond to a request for comment from AFP.
The “Reigning Queens” series was created in 1985, two years before the American artist’s death, when the four queens were in power.
