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Tuesday, Feb. 2, 1999

Mexico City police recover stolen Rufino Tamayo artwork

Undamaged paintings, on loan from private collectors, believed stolen by gang specializing in high-dollar crime

Associated Press

   MEXICO CITY - Police recovered 12 paintings Monday by Rufino Tamayo, one of Mexico's foremost painters, which had been stolen from an exhibition last week.
   The paintings - valued at $2.5 million - were inside black plastic bags when police found them during a raid at a Mexico City apartment complex, said Mauricio Tornero, chief of the city's judicial police.
   Tornero said the suspects fled and there were no arrests in the raid in the northwest Azcapotzalco neighborhood.
   The paintings were recovered undamaged and in their original frames, Tornero said, and their authenticity was confirmed by a curator from the Lopez Quiroga gallery, where the robbery took place Jan. 28.
   Police had been given sketches of the four suspects and said they were believed to be part of a gang that specializes in stealing jewelry and works of art in the city's upscale neighborhoods of Polanco and Lomas de Chapultepec.
   "Their capers are very quick and very smooth," Tornero said. "They chose the 12 most valuable pieces in the exhibition."
   The paintings, on loan from private art collectors in the United States, Europe and Mexico, were part of a 43-canvas show the gallery organized to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Tamayo's birth.
   Tamayo was born Aug. 26, 1899, and his surreal paintings were characterized by the vivid colors and expressions of his native Oaxaca state in southern Mexico.
   Orphaned at an early age, Tamayo studied art in Mexico City and, along with muralists Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, was a member of the so-called "Contemporary Group" that strove to portray Mexico's indigenous roots.
   

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  © 1999 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.