Picky Thieves Steal Paintings by Chagall From Art Gallery

In a theft intricately planned and deftly executed, two Marc Chagall paintings worth more than half a million dollars were stolen from a Beverly Hills art gallery, owner Tim Yarger said Saturday.

In addition to outsmarting a sophisticated security system, the thief ignored more valuable works by Picasso and Renoir, leading management to believe that the burglary was commissioned by someone with specific tastes.

“This was a theft-to-order type of situation,” said gallery spokeswoman Alexis Versace. “It wasn’t just random burglary. . . . It’s very ‘Thomas Crown Affair.’ ”

Sometime last Sunday night, two works by the Russian-born modernist disappeared off a wall on the second floor of the Rodeo Drive gallery. When workers at the Dolce and Gabbana store under construction next door arrived at 7 a.m. Monday, they noticed a hole carved into the gallery’s back door and alerted police.

By climbing in and out through the hole, the burglar apparently circumvented an alarm system and eluded motion detectors inside. And while several cameras are used to monitor the gallery during business hours, the images are not recorded on tape.

“They came in, came upstairs, came right to this location and took the paintings, and disturbed nothing else,” Yarger said. “It was curious that they chose only those two. . . . There was another [Chagall] painting hanging on the same wall between the two that were stolen.”

Yarger said he waited several days to go public with the theft because he didn’t want the media to interfere with police and insurance investigators. His hope is that the thief will try to sell the artworks to someone at an auction house, gallery or museum who will recognize them as stolen.

But what’s more likely, Yarger conceded, is that the paintings will remain behind closed doors.

“I assume they can only enjoy them in the privacy of their home, forever,” he said. “They can’t talk about them, they can’t show them, they can’t market them. It will require such discipline by the criminal that ordered this up to never talk about it.”

Yarger and Versace said it is not uncommon for stolen paintings to reenter the market several decades later, only after they have become family heirlooms.

“Sometimes, pieces like this will surface generations down the road,” Versace said. “Families inherit pieces of art that have been stolen and they don’t realize it.”