The Art Theft's Choice

What occurred to Figure Painting upon reading that $163 million worth of art — that translates to one painting each by Cézanne, Degas, van Gogh, and Monet — was stolen from the E. G. Bührle Collection in Zurich over the weekend was that it was the at least the third art theft we'd read about since December. Just before the holidays, some crooks broke into the São Paulo Museum of Art and lifted two paintings off the walls — one a Picasso — and last week, two paintings (also Picassos) were stolen from a Swiss gallery not far from the Bührle Collection. Who, we wondered, is the most popular artist among these capers?

That'd be, in fact, Picasso, according to the Art Loss Register. There are 572 of the artist's works registered as missing or stolen with the database. Three have even made the register's list of top 10 stolen treasures: Maya With Doll and Portrait of Jacqueline, worth a combined $66 million dollars, were swiped (from Picasso's granddaughter's home, no less) in Paris last year. While those have been recovered, Head of a Woman, worth $8 million, is still missing from the yacht from which it was taken in 1999. (Wouldn't you just love to have a Picasso on your yacht?)