Andy Warhol Art Theft

Posted on 14 September 2009 by Stenberg-Tendys W.L. in Society

A million dollar reward has been offered, by an anonymous source, for any information leading to the recovery of the multi-million dollar original sports collection of pop art portraits, by Andy Warhol.

Housekeeper for noted, art collector Richard L. Weisman, a former investment banker and member of a prominent art colleting family, discovered that 11 portraits had been removed from the dining room walls of Weisman’s West Los Angeles home.

According to Det. Donald Hrycyk, head of LAPD’s art theft detail, there was no sign of forced entry into the home and nothing else had been disturbed, including other Warhol pieces on nearby walls. The police have no leads or suspects other than a vague description of a maroon-coloured van that might have been in the driveway around the time of the theft.

Weisman was friends with Warhol and commissioned the brightly coloured silk screen paintings of famous athletes, in the late 1970s. This was a period when Warhol produced hundreds of similar paintings for wealthy patrons. The athlete series is well known, though not considered to be among Warhol’s best work.

The ten portraits included boxing great Muhammad Ali, tennis champion Chris Evert, Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Olympic skater Dorothy Hamill and former football star O.J. Simpson. Each of the silk-screen works measured 40 inches square. Also stolen was a portrait of Weisman.

“I commissioned him to do this set of athletes because, generally speaking, the worlds of art and sports don’t mesh that well,” Weisman said in a recent interview. Weisman last lent out the collection for a benefit exhibition, in May.

The investigation will be complicated by the fact that the athlete set is one of several. Each set looks similar, but was commissioned with a different colour scheme. It is believed that Weisman owns several of the sets.

The total value of the work could not be immediately assessed. Tyler Lemkin, director of the Greenfield Sacks Gallery in Santa Monica, which recently opened a show of Warhol prints, said that original Warhol paintings on canvas, such as the ones that were stolen “Start in the high six figures or $1 million. Weisman has lost a significant amount of important art.”

Weisman tried to sell the collection in 2002 for $3 million.

Compartelo: