Eideard

 
A collection of 300 paintings worth millions of euros have been discovered in a Polish outhouse belonging to a 92-year-old former bricklayer, with police baffled as to how they got there.

The paintings were found mixed up with junk and rubbish in a dirty two-storey concrete building in the bricklayer’s garden near the north-western city of Szczecin.

Police said the mysterious collection included works of art from the Renaissance and German baroque periods, with the oldest painting dating back to 1532. They also discovered a lithograph by the Polish artist Jozef Czajkowski, which disappeared from a museum in Katowice during the war…

The collection, having suffered from its 66 years in the outhouse, has now been moved to a museum in Szczecin. “Many of the pictures are in a terrible condition and we’re trying to identify them and find out where they came from,” said Przmyslaw Kimon, spokesman for Szczecin police. “Some of them are Italian so we’re in contact with the Italian authorities, and we are also working with Interpol.”

But police admitted to being perplexed as to how the bricklayer, now charged with handling stolen art, came to possess the paintings. Their investigation has also been hindered by the fact that two strokes have left the man known only as Antoni M. [owing to reporting restrictions] unable to communicate.

Most theories revolve around the possibility that the bricklayer had somehow managed to get hold of a collection of looted art, abandoned in the chaotic last weeks of the Second World War as Germans put life before property in their efforts to escape the advancing Red Army…

Possessing an interest in art he decided to keep the paintings rather than turn them into the authorities.
He also decided to keep them out of public sight. Stashing them in hiding places in his outhouse, he made the building off-limits to even his closest family.

The news of the discovery was welcomed by Leszek Jodlinski, director of the Silesia Museum in Katowice, one of the museums stripped bare by the Nazis during the war, and the former home of the Czajkowski lithograph.

BTW – ever wish to see a great film about Resistance fighters stopping a Nazi art hoard from being carried off to Germany, rent The Train [1964], starring Burt Lancaster.

Click to enlarge!

A new piece of artwork by Richard Sargent, featuring a huge crowd of robots from movies, television and more. Can you find WALL-E among them?

You might win a signed poster print of Richard’s ‘Where’s WALL-E?’ art! How many characters can you identify? Use the guide picture to name as many as you can. The most correct answers will win a poster. Answers to richard@hopewellstudios.com. Closing date for entries 31st August 2011. Entries will be judged by name and origin of each character; in the event of a tie a winner will be chosen at random.

Thanks, Ursarodinia

Liu Bolin’s amazing camouflage artwork

At first glance, this may look like a photograph of shelves in a supermarket. But look more closely and you may see a man painstakingly painted to blend in with the colourful background. Chinese artist Liu Bolin has become world renowned for his camouflage art. Liu uses a team of two assistants to paint the camouflage onto him to make him invisible, and each photograph can take up to ten hours to set up. In some cases, Liu has his assistants paint his body and then he remains extremely still until an unsuspecting passer-by happens to walk past.

Click on the photo to see a photo gallery of his work.

Beautiful work.

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You can find all the examples over here.

Thanks, Jägermeister

Is this Picasso yours?

When New York art collector William Kingsland died in 2006, he left behind hundreds of works of art. But some, including works by Pablo Picasso, turned out to have been stolen.

The FBI, searching for the rightful owners of possibly stolen items, posted photographs on Monday of some Kingsland items on its Web site.

Kingsland left behind an impressive collection of more than 300 pieces, including a minimalist still-life by Giorgio Morandi and collages by Kurt Schwitters.

Because he left no will and no heirs stepped forward, public administrators hired auction houses Christie’s and Stair Galleries to sell the art.

But an oil-on-canvas by early-American painter John Singleton auctioned off by Stair for $85,000 was discovered to have been a stolen item, and Christie’s had to cancel a sale from Kingsland’s collection when issues of provenance, or history of ownership, cropped up.

The FBI said it has since found several items had been stolen and believes there are more. It posted photographs of some 140 pieces of art on its Web site.

Check it out, folks. Some of these pieces may have been stolen decades ago.