|
 The "Odalisque in Red Pants," worth roughly $3 million, was
stolen from the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art at some point
during a tumultuous period after the start of socialist Hugo
Chavez's presidency in 1999.
The theft went unnoticed for months or even years because the
robbers replaced it with a forgery.
To this day, no one has been charged with the crime nor have its
exact circumstances been established.
The original was finally retrieved in 2012 after it was offered
to undercover FBI agents at a Miami Beach hotel for about
$740,000.
The striking topless odalisque, a word of Turkish origin meaning
concubine, traveled back to Venezuela last July to great
fanfare.
She now graces the same museum again, right next to the gaudy
imitation that long duped visitors, allowing the public to
compare the two and reviving interest in the mystery over who
poached it and why the theft took so long to come to light.
"It's a very bad copy," said Venezuelan artist Elizabeth
Cemborain, who was fascinated by the case. "It doesn't have the
original's design, it doesn't have its elegance. I don't
understand how no one realized."
The forgery is, indeed, shockingly amateurish.
It is in acrylic rather than oil, and has six horizontal green
stripes instead of seven plus a big brown stain in the middle.
The odalisque's sweet face looks contorted in the fake, and even
her famous red trousers are off-color.
The museum touts the exhibit as an opportunity to learn about
the illegal traffic of cultural goods, and an educational video
explains the many differences between the two paintings.
"This exhibit just generates more questions. It's almost a piece
of contemporary art in and of itself," said Cemborain.
Venezuela's culture ministry the National Museums Foundation did
not respond to requests for comments.
ODALISQUE'S ODYSSEY
The museum says its coveted Matisse had been stolen by 2001 but
Venezuelan journalist Marianela Balbi, who wrote a respected
book about the robbery, argues it was snatched sometime between
December 1999, when it was moved for protection from floods, and
mid-2000.
[to top of second column] |
While Balbi says the museum was negligent, she has not directly
accused any officials of involvement in the heist.
In 2002, after a brief coup against Chavez plunged Venezuela into
chaos, Matisse's muse surfaced in Florida.
A self-identified Venezuelan National Guard colonel tried to sell it
to a Miami art dealer, according to Balbi's "The Kidnapping of the
Odalisque."
In late 2002, Venezuela-born Miami gallery owner Genaro Ambrosino
got wind the painting was on the market.
Ambrosino says he tried to corroborate the information with the
museum only to be ignored or told there was a bogus painting
circulating.
"I was furious," Ambrosino told Reuters. "So I sent an email to
everyone I knew in the art world."
A stunned Caracas art scene started asking questions and Venezuela
in December 2002 finally announced its Matisse, bought for $480,000
from a New York gallery in 1981, had indeed been poached.
Balbi says it changed hands several times between art thieves and
apparently unsuspecting dealers over a decade, including stops in
New York, Paris, and Mexico, before the FBI seized it back in Miami.
A U.S. judge last year sentenced two people to prison for trying to
sell the stolen painting, and Venezuela requested it be returned.
"It's absurd that they're showing the copy too," Balbi said of the
new exhibit. "It legitimizes the object of a crime that Venezuelan
authorities haven't done anything about in 12 years."
(Corrects worth in second paragraph to $3 million from $300 million)
(Reporting by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Kieran Murray and Tom
Brown)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
