Thieves targeted an art gallery in the southern Netherlands on Friday, successfully making off with two screen prints by the late American visual artist Andy Warhol.
Two of Warhol’s other works were damaged during the theft, which occurred at the MPV Gallery, a contemporary art gallery located in Oisterwijk in the Dutch province of North Brabant.
The gallery’s owner, Mark Peet Visser, said the thieves used explosives to break into the building, executing a brazen heist that was recorded on security cameras.
“The bomb attack was so violent that my entire building was destroyed,” Visser said, noting that the blast was so intense it damaged other shops along the street.
“So they did that part of it well, too well actually,” he said.
However, Visser said the theft took an “amateurish” turn after the thieves made it outside the gallery.
“They ran to the car with the artworks and it turns out that they won’t fit in the car,” he said.
Warhol Screen Prints
The four artworks were part of a series that Warhol created in 1985, just two years before his death.Warhol, a leading figure in the 1960s Pop Art movement born in Pittsburgh, died on Feb. 22 from cardiac arrest after undergoing routine gallbladder surgery. He was 58.
Renowned for his photographic silkscreen printing technique, Warhol’s portfolio, titled “Reigning Queens,” featured 16 silkscreen portraits of four female monarchs ruling at the time.
“Warhol made four portraits of each queen, differing from each other in color and in the abstract color blocks overlaying them.”
The queens were each told about the series, which Warhol created at the suggestion of his European dealer, Amsterdam gallery owner George Mulder.
“The queens were personally approached with the news that they would be portrayed in bright colors by the ‘King of Pop Art,’” the release states.
“Mulder later said that the four queens reacted very differently to the news that they would be included in the series: Elizabeth reacted neutrally but liked her portrait, Margrethe was of the opinion that Andy Warhol was a bad influence on youth, Ntombi Twala had not heard of Warhol before, and Queen Beatrix was the only one of the reigning queens to react enthusiastically to the idea.”
According to MPV Gallery, most of Warhol’s “Reigning Queens” pieces have either been sold at auction or in private sales.
“It is unknown how many Reigning Queens series have been broken up and how many remain intact. It is known, however, that few public institutions possess a complete series of silkscreens and that a complete series is offered only sporadically on the art market,” the gallery noted. “This makes the Reigning Queens series one of the most sought-after series for art collectors, bringing record amounts time and again.”
The four screen prints targeted in the heist were slated to be sold at the PAN Amsterdam art fair, set to take place from Nov. 24 to Dec. 1.
Visser said the portraits were “unique” because they were signed and numbered by Warhol. The gallery owner declined to elaborate on the value of the prints.
