Seven suspects were arrested in connection with the theft of the prints from L’Amandier restaurant in the south of France.
French authorities discovered six stolen Pablo Picasso prints under a pile of clothes in a home on the French Riviera on Tuesday, November 3, and arrested seven suspects for the theft, the French National Gendarmerie said in a press release. Details and images of the works have not yet been made public.
On the night of October 1, two masked intruders broke into L’Amandier, a restaurant in the village of Mougins, while a getaway driver remained on the lookout. The duo made away with six of the artworks on display in the restaurant’s Salon Picasso lounge. The prints, which have an estimated worth of over €100,000 ($112,208), were reportedly found in perfect condition behind clothes and toolboxes in one of the village houses they searched, according to Le Monde.
Picasso first visited Mougins in 1936 and returned decades later to live out his last 12 years of life in Notre-Dame-de-Vie. L’Amandier’s Salon Picasso lounge pays tribute to the Spanish artist and his impact on the former farming village, which became a tourism hotspot after his arrival.
