Rotterdam art thieves take valuable paintings in dawn heist

Picasso, Gauguin, Matisse, Freud and Monet are among the artists whose works were stolen from Dutch gallery

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/oct/16/rotterdam-art-thieves-valuable-paintings 

• Kate Connolly
• The Guardian, Tuesday 16 October 2012 18.27 BST
• Paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Gauguin, Meyer de Haan, Lucian Freud and two by Monet were stolen on Tuesday from a gallery in Rotterdam in what will rank as one of the most spectacular art heists of modern times.
  The dawn raid at the Kunsthal museum in the Netherlands' second largest city was described by police as a well-planned and bold operation. Security experts speculated that the thieves might have taken advantage of Rotterdam's port – one of the largest in the world – to swiftly move the paintings abroad. While police were reluctant to put a price tag on the stolen paintings, experts said it ran into tens of millions of pounds.
  One security expert described the museum, designed by the star Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, as a "gem of a gallery", but a "nightmare to protect", and suggested that thieves spent months plotting the robbery.
  The works were named by the museum's management on Tuesday afternoon, as Pablo Picasso's Harlequin Head; Henri Matisse's Reading Girl in White and Yellow; Claude Monet's Waterloo Bridge, London, and Charing Cross Bridge, London; Paul Gauguin's Girl in Front of Open Window, De Haan's Self-Portrait and Freud's Woman with Eyes Closed. The Picasso was the best known work.Jop Ubbens, the general director of Christie's in Amsterdam, told the Dutch daily newspaper De Volkskrant the paintings were worth "far more than just a few million euros".
  He declined to give a more exact estimate, saying he had not seen the paintings. "They could be worth €50m or more," he said, pointing out that a work of Monet's brought almost €52m at auction four years ago, the highest amount ever paid for a French impressionist painting.
  Ubbens did not rule out that the paintings had been "stolen to order" by an art collector, "in which case they could be hanging on a wall somewhere by now, never to be seen again."
  more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/oct/16/rotterdam-art-thieves-valuable-paintings