Artful Thieves Grab Picasso, Chagall Works

Artworks by Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall were stolen from a Palm Desert gallery Tuesday night, authorities said.

An alarm sounded at Modern Masters Fine Art gallery about 11 p.m. When authorities responded, they found a door had been forced open. The gallery’s owner identified the two missing works and said they were worth nearly $100,000 combined.

Surveillance video showed two people prying open the metal door frame in the gallery’s courtyard with a crowbar, gallery owner Michael Gudelauski said. He said the individuals then went straight to the two pieces, removing them from the walls. They spent less than 30 seconds in the gallery.

“They seemed to know exactly where they were going,” Gudelauski said.

Such art crimes are “not frequent” in the area, said Riverside County sheriff’s investigator Mark Hoyt, who is working on the case.

The Picasso, “Femme Regardant par la Fenetre,” is a 1959 linoleum cut in shades of brown and black of a nude woman reclining and looking out a window, printed by the artist and worth about $53,000, Gudelauski said.

The Chagall, a 1964 lithograph titled “The Tribe of Dan,” is a multicolored religious work in blues, yellows and reds, also printed by the artist. It illustrates one of a series of 12 stained glass windows Chagall made for an Israeli university, and is worth about $35,000, Gudelauski said.

Both works are signed by the artists and set in hand-carved gold frames worth $3,000 each.

The suspects were seen by several people in a late-model gray Mercedes-Benz in a nearby parking lot, Hoyt said.

Gudelauski said he thinks the thieves chose those works, in the middle of the gallery’s price range, because they were easy to transport.

“They were both very attractive pieces,” emblematic of each artist’s work, Gudelauski said.

The gallery, which specializes in 20th century artists, is one of dozens of area galleries frequented by museums and wealthy collectors living in the Coachella Valley.

Such works by popular artists could be difficult to sell, Gudelauski said, because they are easily recognizable.

“There’s just not much you can do with stolen art,” he said.