Three men stole paintings worth $163 million by Zuzana Moravcova

In Switzerland, three men robbed private gallery of impressionism masterpieces, and ran away with paintings by Van Gogh, Cezanne and Monet. The armed robbers wearing ski masks entered the museum a half-hour before its was due to close on Sunday, and in a few minutes collected four precious paintings from the exhibition hall, said the police. One of the men spoke German with a Slavic accent.Worldwide known and historically important masterpieces - Claude Monet's "Poppy field at Vetheuil," Edgar Degas' "Ludovic Lepic and his Daughter," Vincent van Gogh's "Blooming Chestnut Branches" and Paul Cezanne's "Boy in the Red Waistcoat" were stolen from the E.G. Buehrle private collection. Their value reaches $163.2 million.According to Marco Cortesi, police spokesman, it is the largest art robbery in Switzerland's history and one of the biggest ever in Europe. "This is an entirely new dimension in criminal culture," he said.Especially the stolen Van Gogh has special value because it is one of the significant works that he painted in the last six weeks of the artist's life, when his mental illness made him commit suicide. The art collection of Emil Georg B_πhrle (1890-1956), a Zurich industrialist, is one of the most important private European art collections of 20th-century. Switzerland has a large number of outstanding art collections, but some of them have been hit by thefts and robberies over the years. Last week, two oil paintings by Pablo Picasso were stolen from a gallery near Zurich. The police said the Picasso theft may have been connected with the Buehrle robbery.

by Zuzana Moravcova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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Edited by Katarina Rastocna