Guillaume Apollinaire returned one of the stolen statues to the French newspaper the "Paris-Journal". Apollinaire implicated his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning in the theft of the "Mona Lisa", but he was also exonerated. The theft of the "Mona Lisa" was perpetrated by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian house painter who acted alone and was only caught two years later when he tried to sell the painting in Florence. Apollinaire wrote the preface for the first Cubist exposition outside of Paris; "VIII Salon des Indépendants", Brussels, 1911. In an open-handed preface to the catalogue of the Brussels Indépendants show,
The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting film was featured in film festivals after its release such as the London Film Festival in 1979. "Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting" has been noted as one of Ruiz’s masterpieces that challenges the boundaries of cinema and film theory. “You can say "The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting" is a detective film because of its riddle… In a more baroque system as in the system of "Hypothesis", you don’t enjoy finding the enigma.” "Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting" begins with a static shot of a street which appears at first to be a still image or photograph. The opening shot