tolen Monet, Van Gogh paintings found in Zurich

[allesennogwat]

ZURICH, Feb 19, 2008 - - Swiss police said on Tuesday they had found two stolen paintings -- one Monet and a van Gogh -- of the four that were stolen last week from a gallery in Zurich.


The two paintings, estimated to be worth 70 million Swiss francs (64 million dollars, 44 million euros), were recovered Monday in the back seat of a car parked at a psychiatric hospital in the city, Zurich police said in a statement.

They are in a good condition with their glass covering still intact.

"Poppies near Vetheuil" (1879) by Claude Monet, and "Blossoming Chestnut Branch" (1890) by van Gogh, were formally identified by the director of the Buehrle Museum from where they were stolen last Sunday, the police said.

They are still searching for the other two paintings -- "Count Lepic and his Daughters" by Edgar Degas (1871), and "Boy in a Red Waistcoat" by Paul Cezanne (1888).

An employee of the psychiatric hospital alerted police to the white car left in the car park. The car had Zurich number plates but these turned out to have been stolen from another vehicle earlier in the month, the police said.

The audacious theft from Zurich's Emil Buehrle museum was one of the largest art robberies carried out in Europe in the last two decades.

The four stolen Impressionist masterpieces had a joint worth of 180 million Swiss francs.

Three masked men entered the museum on February 10 and threatened staff with a pistol before making off in a car.

The museum had offered a reward of 100,000 Swiss francs for any information leading to the paintings' return.

The Buehrle museum was founded by German-born magnate Emil Buehrle, who made his fortune with the Oerlikon-Buehrle munitions factory in Zurich, which sold arms to both sides in World War II.

He began collecting art in the 1930s but made most of his purchases of key Impressionist works in the post-war period, buying about three quarters of his collection between 1951 and 1956 from leading art dealers in New York, London, Paris and Zurich.

The museum opened in 1960 and holds more than 200 paintings including seven each by Van Gogh and Cezanne, six by Degas and five by Monet, according to its website.

It also features works by other Impressionists and early Modernist painters like Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso and Chagall, as well as medieval sculptures, Gothic altarpieces and Old Masters.

[allesennogwat]

Stolen Monet, Van Gogh paintings found in Zurich