The heating stove in Olga’s bathroom. She burned the artworks in it, she stated in a police interview. Photo Mugur Varzariu   						 						Olga is o

The art of stealing - nrc.nl

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2024-10-29 12:00:12

The heating stove in Olga’s bathroom. She burned the artworks in it, she stated in a police interview. Photo Mugur Varzariu

Olga is on her own. Her son is in prison, being held on suspicion of having committed what they are calling on television ‘the art theft of the century’. She knows that the accusation is correct. Along with friends, her son Radu stole seven valuable artworks from a museum in Rotterdam, loaded them into a car and drove them to Romania.

There, in Carcaliu, a remote village at the poor south-eastern tip of the country, Olga stands in front of the heating stove in the bathroom. A short while ago she lit the fire then stepped out into the biting cold, making her way to the small graveyard opposite her house where, in the dead of night, she dug up the paintings and brought them back inside.

Picasso, Gauguin, Matisse, Monet, Meijer de Haan and Freud. On television they are talking about a loot worth hundreds of millions of euros. The amount is not important to her. The pictures are evidence against her son and destroying the evidence seems like the only way she can help him.

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