Ben Pawlowski
SPAIN’S Policia Nacional have successfully recovered a rare artwork from a leading Catalan artist – sixteen years since the painting was snatched from a Barcelona art gallery.
Valued at €21,000, ‘Paisaje’ is a landscape piece painted in vivid colour by Joaquin Mir y Trinxet, one of the leading exponents of what came to be known as Catalan modernism.
Living from 1873-1940, Mir y Trinxet was a member of the so-called ‘Generation of 1898’, a cluster of artists who emerged from the severe upheavals endured by Spain throughout the nineteenth century.
Many of his most popular works are housed at the National Art Museum of Catalunya (MNAC), located on Montjuic hill in Barcelona.
But ‘Paisaje’ was nicked by a group of crafty burglars in 2009.
READ MORE: Police recover Francis Bacon painting worth €5 million stolen from Madrid home in 2015
After an operation run in collaboration with international police organisation Interpol, Spanish police successfully located the stolen art and have since returned it to its rightful owner.
Police have not said if anyone has been arrested in relation to the theft.
Mir y Trinxet is not alone in having his valuable works plundered by cunning Spanish criminals.
In 2015, five works by Irish-born British painter Francis Bacon were seized in an infamous mass heist from a Madrid apartment owned by Jose Capelo, one of Bacon’s close friends.
The five paintings are said to be worth up to €30 million.
Four of the portraits have since been recovered, with sixteen people arrested for their role in the incident.
But one remains on the loose with an estimated market value of a whopping €5 million.
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