€59m painting robbery stuns art world

Art experts were stunned today after one of the world’s most famous paintings was stolen at gunpoint in a €59m raid at a packed gallery in Oslo.

Masked thieves barged into the Munch museum and ripped the Edvard Munch masterpiece The Scream and another painting from the walls.

Brandishing handguns, the robbers pushed past guards and loaded the painting and another titled Madonna into a getaway car before speeding off.

No one was hurt, and a nationwide hunt for the thieves was under way, police said.

There was concern that the paintings were not alarmed and fears that they may have been damaged in the hasty getaway.

Arts experts puzzled as to why thieves would take such a high-profile painting which they could not hope to sell to dealers. It was thought that they may seek ransom for its return.

It is the second time in a decade that a version of the iconic painting has been stolen. Another version of The Scream – one of four Munch painted – was stolen from Oslo’s National Gallery in February 1994, but recovered three months later.

Experts said the paintings are worth tens of millions of pounds.

Police said they got to the scene a few minutes after the late morning theft and had found the getaway car and pieces of the paintings’ frames within hours.

“We are searching for the suspects with all available means,” police spokeswoman Hilde Walsoe said.

Witnesses said the thieves – two or three of them – simply stormed in and yanked the paintings from the walls.

Francois Castang, a French radio producer who was at the museum at the time, said the paintings were not protected by alarms or other security measures.

“The paintings were simply attached by wire to the walls,” he told France Inter radio. “All you had to do is pull on the painting hard for the cord to break loose – which is what I saw one of the thieves doing.”

Many visitors at the Munch Museum panicked and thought they were being attacked by terrorists.

“One robber was wearing a black face mask and something that looked like a gun to force a female security guard down on the floor,” Marketa Cajova told the NTB news agency.

The Scream, Munch’s best-known painting, depicts an anguished figure seemingly screaming while holding his hands to his head. The Munch Museum had two versions of the painting, a private collector owns the third, and the fourth – stolen and recovered 10 years ago – is on display at Oslo’s National Gallery.

“They were all painted by Munch, and they are all just as valuable,” Munch Museum spokeswoman Jorunn Christoffersen said. “Still, these painting are not possible to sell, and it is impossible to put a price tag on them.”

However, Knut Forsberg, manager of Blomqvist Fine Arts, Norway’s oldest auction house since 1870, estimated the value of “The Scream” at between €48.8m and €60.6m. But he said it was impossible to sell them on the open market.

“Most likely, the thieves will demand a ransom to deliver the paintings back,” Forsberg said.

He refused to criticise the museum for lack of security.

“You could fasten the picture better, but then the thieves would just cut the picture from the frame and damage the painting,” he said.

The stolen Madonna was painted in 1893-1894, and depicts an eroticised Madonna with a blood-red halo in a dark, swirling aura. Munch later produced woodcut lithographs with a similar depiction.

Munch, a Norwegian painter and graphic artist who worked in Germany as well as his home country, developed an emotionally charged style that was of great importance in the birth of the 20th century Expressionist movement.

He painted The Scream in 1893, and together with Madonna it was a part of his Frieze of Life series, in which sickness, death, anxiety, and love are central themes. He died in 1944 at the age of 81.