Three small but valuable works of art by Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin and Pierre-Auguste Renoir have been returned to their former home in Argentina, 25 years after they were stolen. Argentina's culture secretary has announced that the Renoir oil painting, Cezanne sketch and Gaughin watercolour have arrived back in the Buenos Aires Fine Arts Museum.
The three were part of 23 pieces, worth a combined $25 million US, stolen from the museum in Buenos Aires on Christmas Eve 1980. It has been called Argentina's biggest art heist.
The pieces were part of a collection bequeathed to the museum by Argentinian arts patron Mercedes Santamarina and included pieces by Eduard Degas and Henri Matisse.
They were subsequently discovered at a Paris gallery in 2002. The gallery said it received the art works from a Taiwanese man, claiming to represent a Chinese investor. The investor says he bought them from a Brazilian senator, who said he had inherited them.
The French government seized the paintings. A federal judge in Argentina then began legal proceedings to recover the pieces, which were returned to the South American country this month.
Nov 2005
