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Two Warhol Prints Brazenly Stolen From A Dutch Gallery

Thieves blew open the doors of a gallery in Netherlands to steal two rare Pop Art prints by Andy Warhol.

The sensational theft occurred on Friday at the MPV Gallery in Oisterwijk, Netherlands. The two stolen paintings were from the “Reigning Queens” series by Andy Warhol where he created pop arts of the then-reigning queens from across the world. The MPV Gallery housed four works from the series – all having the same hand-painted numbers – thus making them quite rare. The thieves stole paintings of Queen Elizabeth II of the UK, and Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.

CCTV footage showed that the thieves, instead of entering stealthily, blew off the gallery’s entrance doors. They then pulled the paintings from their frames and stuffed them in their vehicle. Investigators speculate that the perpetrators might have wanted to steal all four works, but their van had no more space. Meanwhile, the museum’s experts are afraid that the pulling out of the paintings might have done some permanent damage to them.

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In a news interview, the MPV Gallery called it a “shame” that the works were stolen and separated. The museum did not reveal the value of the stolen works. However, in 2022, a painting of Queen Elizabeth from a similar series by Warhol was auctioned for $856,000 in Toronto. In 2021, two paintings of Queen Beatrix were sold for $235,000 in The Hague. The Reigning Queens paintings at the MPV Gallery were supposed to go for an auction in November. Some estimates suggest that the two paintings were worth over a million dollars.