Rotterdam art thieves take seven masterpieces

Seven paintings by some of the world's most famous artists have been stolen from an exhibition in the Netherlands.

They include a Picasso, a Matisse, and two Monets all on display in a Rotterdam museum.

Police said they were reviewing videotapes of the theft, which took place around 3am local time.

The Kunsthal museum said that the paintings taken belonged to the private Triton Foundation.

The bulk of the foundation's collection went on display for the first time as a single exhibition last week, one of two exhibitions arranged in honour of the Kunsthal's 20th anniversary. The museum is a display space that has no permanent collection of its own - the name means "art gallery" in Dutch.

The Triton Foundation is a collection of avant-garde art put together by multimillionaire Willem Cordia, an investor and businessman who died last year.

The Kunsthal exhibition was showing works by more than 150 famed artists. Others whose work was on show include Alexander Calder, Paul Cezanne, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali, Edgar Degas, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Gauguin, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Rene Magritte, Claude Monet, August Rodin, and Andy Warhol.

Curators of the Cordia family collection aim to have the works on display for the public, and pieces have been shown in the past.

However, the current presentation was the first time the entire collection had been exhibited together.