They had been the final hours to ponder the collages by Henri Matisse, a part of the collection Jazzwhen two armed males broke into the primary municipal library of São Paulo (Brazil) this Sunday, the place they had been on show. At gunpoint, however with out firing a shot, they took eight works by the French artist and 5 by the Brazilian Candido Portinari exhibited in an exhibition that obtained the primary guests of the closing day. The thieves entered and left by the primary door of the Mário de Andrade library, fleeing by the bustling streets of the historic heart of São Paulo. These works by Matisse had been already stolen years in the past. One of the thieves was arrested this Monday, the second can also be recognized, in response to the newspaper The Globe.
The works had been a part of the exhibition From ebook to museum: MAM São Paulo and the Mário de Andrade Library (From the ebook to the museum), which included twenty items by Matisse in dialogue with different artists from the collections of each establishments. The exhibition celebrated the centenary of the municipal library, which bears the identify of the Brazilian poet and author Andrade.
The robbers overpowered a safety guard after one among them confirmed her a gun below his shirt. While one locked her in a room after taking away her radio and cellular phone, her confederate entered the room the place the works had been hanging, intimidated an older couple who was visiting the exhibition, took the items off the wall, put them in a fabric bag and fled. The Portinari engravings that had been additionally taken had been a part of the work Ingenuity boy.
The album Jazz It was created by Matisse throughout World War II. “Does these collagespaints the papers, cuts them out and varieties the pictures. You see how they give the impression of being collages“They are very powerful images, with that confusion of colors, very characteristic of Matisse with all that ambiguity due to the situation of the war, where you don’t know if there is violence there or not,” Pedro Nery, museologist on the municipal library, defined in a promotional video.
The artist was sick with most cancers when he painted the stolen works. Since he couldn’t paint or sculpt, he created collages. Pieces collected in a ebook titled Jazz and of which 250 copies had been revealed. It was first revealed in 1947 in France.
The greater than 25,000 surveillance cameras put in in essentially the most populated metropolis in Brazil have contributed to discovering the escape route of the perpetrators of the theft. The detainee is 31 years previous and has a historical past of theft and drug trafficking. The van they used had been situated earlier and inspected by investigators.
Recordings from the Smart Sampa system – a type of huge brother of facial recognition – present one of many thieves on a road close to the library whereas carrying the most important items of the loot in his palms. At one level, he locations them on the bottom and filming is interrupted, in response to the aforementioned newspaper.
The scene of the theft is the primary municipal library of São Paulo, a century-old cultural heart within the historic heart, a constructing by which the motion of readers and guests is fixed. The album works Jazz They returned to the gathering of the Mário de Andrade library a decade in the past, after a singular incident as a result of they had been beforehand stolen with out the museum realizing it. In 2006 they had been situated by Argentine customs brokers on the border. For years the library refused to acknowledge that they’d been stolen, till it found that the items it owned had been copies, not the originals, which it recovered in 2015.
https://elpais.com/cultura/2025-12-08/robados-a-punta-de-pistola-ocho-collages-de-matisse-en-una-exposicion-en-sao-paulo.html