FRENCH POLICE have issued a global alert for five masterpieces of 20th century art after a lone thief made away with paintings worth €100 million from a Paris museum yesterday.
Officials at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris said they discovered the five works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Fernand Léger and Georges Braque were missing just before the gallery opened yesterday morning.
Although there were three employees in the building at the time of the theft, it was reportedly not until after 6am that staff noticed a smashed window pane and a sawn padlock.
Video surveillance cameras recorded one person entering through a window.
"This is a serious crime against the heritage of humanity," Christophe Girard, deputy to mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë, said after visiting the crime scene. He said the theft was committed by "one or more individuals who were obviously organised".
The popular museum, in the art deco-style Palais de Tokyo near the Eiffel Tower, was closed to visitors yesterday as police scoured the area for clues and a long-running debate resumed over museum security in the French capital, where there has been a series of high-profile art thefts in recent years.
Officials at the museum said the paintings were worth about €100 million in total, revising an earlier figure of €500 million released by the public prosecutor. The stolen works were Picasso's Le Pigeon aux Petits Pois, Matisse's La Pastorale, Braque's L'Olivier près de l'Estaque, La Femme à l'Éventail by Modigliani and Léger's Nature morte aux Chandeliers.
As soon as the robbery was reported, French police issued descriptions and photos of the paintings to Interpol. An elite police unit is co-ordinating the investigation.
With discussion focusing on why the museum's alarm system failed to activate during the break-in, Mr Girard said: "We must let the police find out how the security system was evaded, especially as these three watchmen saw nothing."
Mr Delanoë pledged city hall's support for the police and museum in their attempts to recover the paintings. "I am saddened and shocked by this theft, which is an intolerable assault on Paris's universal cultural heritage," he said in a statement.
The theft renewed debate over the adequacy of security measures in French museums. In January, about 30 paintings with a total estimated value of about €1 million - including some by Picasso and Henri Rousseau - were stolen from a private villa on the Côte d'Azur.
On New Year's Eve, a pastel by Edgar Dégas disappeared from the Cantini museum in Marseille after the piece - valued at €800,000 - had been lent for an exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, while in June last year, the capital's Picasso Museum was robbed in broad daylight of a book of drawings by the artist. Its value was estimated to be €3 million.