Stolen Edvard Munch artwork recovered after seven years
Norwegian police have recovered a valuable lithograph by Edvard Munch that was stolen in 2009.
The artwork, named Historien, shows a bearded man speaking to a young boy, and was retrieved undamaged. It was valued at the time of its theft at €240,000, but art experts said it was too well-known to be put on the market.
Norway police arrest two in connection with Edvard Munch theft
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Two men have been arrested on suspicion of handling stolen goods but not for the theft itself.
The lithograph was stolen after one of the windows of Nyborg Kunst, a leading Oslo gallery, was smashed with a rock.
“My client denies the charge,” Øystein Storrvik, the lawyer of one of the men, told NTB news agency.
The works of Munch have long been targeted by thieves. In 2004, two of his paintings – The Scream and Madonna, which have a combined value of $100m – were stolen in an afternoon raid on the Munch museum in Oslo.
Ten years earlier, another version of The Scream was stolen from the national art gallery in the city. All the works were later recovered.