Dutch police announced on Tuesday the arrest of a suspect five days after the theft of two works by American artist and pop art master Andy Warhol from an art gallery in Oisterwijk, near Eindhoven (south). .
Police searched various locations and arrested a 23-year-old suspect, who was placed in solitary confinement and allowed to communicate only with his lawyer. The police immediately refused to say whether the stolen works had been found.
The theft took place on the night of Thursday to Friday, using explosives to break into the Mark Peet Visser gallery in Oisterwijk. Two screen-printed portraits, exhibited before a sale at the PAN Amsterdam fair which is being held at the end of the month, were stolen, representing Queen Elizabeth II for one and Queen Margrethe II of Denmark for the other.
They were part of a series of four portraits of which two others, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and the former Swazi queen Ntombi Tfwala were also taken away and then abandoned in the street.
The so-called “Reigning Queens” series was produced by Andy Warhol in 1985, two years before his death, when these four sovereigns reigned. These works “are worth a fortune”, gallery owner Mark Peet Visser told the local press after the burglary.
