Key Points
- Gendarmes found six original Picasso prints stacked intact in a Riviera apartment bedroom.
- The works were taken from the L'Amandier restaurant in Mougins on October 1.
- Seven people were arrested, closing a window investigators feared would see the prints vanish.
The latest:
Six original Pablo Picasso prints stolen from a hilltop restaurant near Cannes were recovered intact one month later, after roughly 40 gendarmes raided two apartments along the French Riviera on the morning of Tuesday, November 3. The prints were found stacked in a bedroom, behind clothes and toolboxes. Seven people were arrested, according to Le Monde.
Details:
- The recovery: Investigators located the works after several weeks of surveillance and wiretapping, Le Monde reported. About 40 gendarmes moved on two apartments simultaneously. All six prints were found in one of the searched homes, undamaged, hidden behind a jumble of clothes and toolboxes in a bedroom.
- Those arrested: Seven people were detained on Tuesday: three suspected burglars and four believed to have acted as accomplices, according to Le Monde. No charges or court appearances were specified. Under French procedure, suspects remain presumed innocent until a court rules on the case.
- The theft: The break-in took place overnight on October 1 at L’Amandier, a restaurant perched in the hills above Cannes in the historic village of Mougins, a few kilometers north of the city. The restaurant’s owner, an art collector, discovered the theft early that morning.
- On camera: Surveillance footage shows two masked and gloved men climbing the terrace and entering through a French door at around 2 am, Le Monde reported. A third person acted as lookout from a vehicle parked nearby. The pair went straight to the restaurant’s Picasso room.
- Under a minute: The two intruders took the works down and fled in less than one minute, according to the footage described by Le Monde. The speed and the direct route to the Picasso room point to a targeted operation rather than an opportunistic break-in.
- The investigation: The Grasse prosecutor’s office opened an inquiry and assigned it to the Cannes research brigade. Lieutenant Colonel Guillaume Plaidy, commander of the Cannes gendarmerie, said investigators moved fast because such works carry a high risk of being resold and never returning to the art market.
- The time pressure: Plaidy said the window to recover the prints was relatively limited. Once stolen artworks enter private resale channels they frequently disappear for years, which shaped the decision to run weeks of surveillance before striking at both addresses at once.
- The wider trend: The case points to a rise in thefts of cultural objects in France, Le Monde reported, without publishing figures on the scale of the increase or identifying which categories of objects or regions account for it.
Background:
Mougins is closely tied to Picasso: the Spanish painter spent the final years of his life in the village above Cannes, and local establishments display works connected to him. The stolen prints were originals shown in a dedicated room at the restaurant.
Between the lines:
The operational details point to planning rather than chance. The intruders went directly to the Picasso room, cleared it in under a minute and worked with a lookout in a waiting vehicle, while four of the seven arrested are suspected of being accomplices rather than burglars. The gendarmerie’s stated fear, that the prints would be resold and lost to the market, suggests investigators assumed a buyer existed from the start.
What’s next
Watch whether the Grasse prosecutor’s office brings charges against the seven arrested and what it says about a resale network, along with the return of the prints to the restaurant owner.
