Thefts cripple Jozi gallery

Five pieces of art, by Jules Dalou, Tracey Rose, Ernest Ullman, Sydney Khumalo and Romano Romanelli, disappeared over the past 12 months.
The Dalou piece, named Genl Lazare Hoche, is a bronze sculpture dating from the late 19th century.

The 71-centimetre work, worth R250 000, was stolen from the gallery on Wednesday, 12 January.
Curator Antoinette Murdoch said that the stolen pieces were irreplaceable.
Meanwhile A case of suspected stolen Central Australian rock art is being investigated by authorities in South Australia.

The Aboriginal art was recently advertised online, then withdrawn once the Department of Premier and Cabinet advised eBay it may be stolen.
It has since been found the person listing the item had provided false identification details.
Jenny Thomas of eBay says the site is helping South Australian authorities investigate the suspected theft.

“If you do provide false information when you register on eBay, you will be very quickly found out because it is a very traceable situation,” she said.
“Anyone thinking of attempting to sell a stolen item on the site would be very foolish.

“With a platform like eBay, it is incredibly transparent.”
And here’s another art factoid from the “I- probably-could-have-guessed-that file” — which also contains news that Van Gogh was the aughts’ most famous artist; prolific Modern master Pablo Picasso has more stolen artworks to his name than any other artist living or dead (and that’s after the recent recovery of 271 of them, and Mark Lugo’s stash). Other artists on the “Most-Wanted-by-Art-Thieves” list include Dali, Warhol and even Rembrandt, but the second-most stolen artist is a part-time New Yorker of whom you’ve probably never heard.

According to figures released by the Art Loss Register, there are a whopping 1 147 plundered Picassos parading around the black market.
That’s more than double the second-most stolen artist, Nick Lawrence, a painter and gallerist who splits his time between Provincetown (where he owns DNA Gallery) and New York (where he owns Chelsea’s Freight + Volume). An amazing 557 works by Lawrence have been stolen.

Other popular targets for art thieves include incredibly prolific Modern artists like Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali, and the likewise  hyper-productive Rembrandt. Of the thousands of art thefts reported to the Art Loss Register, most occurred in the UK. (roughly 40 percent), and the US was the second most unsafe country      for art, accounting for 16 percent of stolen artworks.
So if you’re looking to open an art detective agency, you might consider moving to London — and hiring local expert Pierce Brosnan. — IOL.