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‘Spiderman’ burglar gets eight years in prison for stealing $100m worth of art from Paris museum

A thief nicknamed "Spiderman", who snatched five masterpieces from a top Paris museum, was sentenced to eight years in prison on Monday over one of the biggest art heists in recent years.

Published: 21 February 2017 08:34 CET
'Spiderman' burglar gets eight years in prison for stealing $100m worth of art from Paris museum
Vjeran Tomic in Paris. Photo: AFP
Vjeran Tomic (pictured below) and two accomplices were also jointly fined a whopping €104 million ($110 million) over the theft of the paintings by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Leger and Amedeo Modigliani from the
 
Musee d'Art Moderne on the night of May 20, 2010.
 
The fine corresponds to the estimated value of the artworks, which are still missing.
   
A lawyer representing the City of Paris, which runs the museum, call their disappearance an “unspeakable” loss to humanity.
   
Tomic, a 49-year-old seasoned burglar of Croatian origin, admitted robbing the gallery, which is home to more than 8,000 works of 20th-century art.
   
On his arrest he told police he was asked to steal Leger's “Still Life with Candlestick” from 1922, and never imagined he would be able to grab four more.
 
Security lapses 
 
The case revealed extraordinary security lapses at the museum in the ritzy 16th district, on the banks of the Seine.
   
The motion-detection alarms had been out of order for two months when Tomic, who staked out the building for six nights, slipped inside after using acid to dislodge a window pane.
   
After grabbing the Leger without creating a disturbance he went on a stealing spree, taking Picasso's cubist “Dove with Green Peas” from 1912 — alone worth an estimated €25 million — Matisse's “Pastoral” from 1905, Braque's “Olive Tree near Estaque” from 1906, and Modigliani's “Woman with a Fan” from 1919.
   
Three guards on duty failed to spot him. His silhouette popped up only briefly on a security camera.
   
The paintings were only found to be missing from their frames when the museum reopened the next day.
   
Jean-Michel Corvez, a 61-year-old antique dealer who admitted to ordering the theft of the Leger on behalf of an unnamed client, and Yonathan Birn, a 40-year-old watchmaker who admitted to hiding the paintings for a time, were given sentences of seven and six years respectively.
  
On top of their collective fine, the three men were given individual fines of between €150,000 and €200,000 each.
   
Corvez also had his home seized and was banned from dealing in antiques or art for five years.
 
'Bored with his bourgeois life'
 
During the trial Birn told the court he had dumped the paintings but the court expressed doubt over that claim, noting the lack of proof of their destruction.
   
An art lover, he had admitted to becoming enraptured with Modigliani's “Woman with a Fan”.
   
His lawyer had described him as an impressionable man, who was bored with his “nice little bourgeois life”.
   
Tomic, a master burglar, said he took five paintings because he “liked” them.
   
Athletically built and 1.90 metres (six foot 2 inches) tall, he had gained his nickname by clambering into posh Parisian apartments and museums to steal valuable gems and works of art.
   
He was spotted by a homeless man as he roamed around the museum in the days leading to the theft.
  
Police arrested him after receiving an anonymous tip and tracking his mobile phone.
   
There has been a spate of art thefts in Europe in recent years.
   
The most recent, in 2015, involved the theft of five paintings worth €25 million by renowned British artist Francis Bacon in Madrid.
   
Spanish police arrested seven people last year suspected of being involved in that theft.

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ART

African-born director’s new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

One of the rare African-born figures to head a German cultural institution, Bonaventure Ndikung is aiming to highlight post-colonial multiculturalism at a Berlin arts centre with its roots in Western hegemony.

Published: 8 July 2023 10:13 CEST
African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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