麻豆影视

Skip to main content

'Amateurish' thieves steal 2 Warhol prints, damage 2 more in botched heist at Dutch gallery

A man takes an image of a screen print depicting Queen Elizabeth II, one in a series of sixteen prints of four queens titled Reigning Queens, 1985, by Andy Warhol at museum Paleis Het Loo in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, similar to a Warhol work stolen from a gallery in Oisterwijk, Netherlands, early Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong) A man takes an image of a screen print depicting Queen Elizabeth II, one in a series of sixteen prints of four queens titled Reigning Queens, 1985, by Andy Warhol at museum Paleis Het Loo in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, similar to a Warhol work stolen from a gallery in Oisterwijk, Netherlands, early Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
Share
THE HAGUE, Netherlands -

Thieves blew open the door of an art gallery in the southern Netherlands and stole two works from a famous series of screen prints by American pop artist Andy Warhol and left two more badly damaged in the street as they fled the scene of the botched heist, the gallery owner said Friday.

Mark Peet Visser said the thieves attempted to steal all four works from a 1985 Warhol series called 鈥淩eigning Queens,鈥 which features portraits of the then-queens of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark and Swaziland, a small landlocked kingdom in southern Africa which is now called Eswatini.

In a telephone interview, Visser said the heist early Friday at MPV Gallery in the town of Oisterwijk was captured on security cameras, and called it 鈥渁mateurish.鈥

鈥淭he bomb attack was so violent that my entire building was destroyed鈥 and nearby stores were also damaged, he said. "So they did that part of it well, too well actually. And then they ran to the car with the artworks and it turns out that they won't fit in the car. ... At that moment the works are ripped out of the frames and you also know that they are damaged beyond repair, because it is impossible to get them out undamaged.鈥

Visser declined to put a value on the four signed and numbered works, which he had planned to offer for sale as a set at an art fair in Amsterdam later this month.

The thieves got away with portraits of Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Margrethe II of Denmark. The prints of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and Ntombi Tfwala, who is now known as the queen mother of Eswatini, were left on the street as the thieves fled, Visser said.

Police appealed for witnesses as forensic experts examined the badly damaged gallery on Friday.

CTVNews.ca Top Stories

A landlord from B.C.鈥檚 Lower Mainland who evicted a longtime tenant only to rent out the same unit months later for more money has been ordered to compensate him $16,480.

A convict who became Canada 's youngest designated dangerous offender after sexually assaulting a three-month-old baby is seeking escorted leave from prison to attend Indigenous cultural ceremonies in Vancouver.

Police in northern Ontario say a razor blade was found in a child's candy on Halloween night.

Local Spotlight

Auston Matthews has come face to face with his look-alike. On Thursday, the Maple Leafs star met seven-year-old Grayson Joseph, who went viral for dressing up as an Auston Matthews hockey card.

A Halifax junk remover shares some of his company鈥檚 strangest discoveries.

When Leah arrived at work directing traffic around a construction site, she never expected to see a van painted in all sorts of bright colours, and covered in eclectic decorations, including a stuffed moose attached to its roof.

After 14 years of repairing and selling bicycles out of the garage of her home, a Guelph, Ont. woman鈥檚 efforts have ended 鈥 for now, at least.

Epcor says it has removed more than 20,000 goldfish from an Edmonton stormwater pond.

Witches and warlocks have been flocking to New Brunswick waterways this month, as a new Halloween tradition ripples across the province.

New Brunswicker Jillea Godin鈥檚 elaborate cosplay pieces attract thousands to her online accounts, as well as requests from celebrities for their own pieces.

A new resident at a Manitoba animal rescue has waddled her way into people's hearts.

Hundreds of people ran to the music of German composer and pianist Beethoven Wednesday night in a unique race in Halifax.