A multimillion dollar collection of Andy Warhol portraits of Muhammad Ali and other sports superstars was stolen from a Los Angeles home, police said on Friday.
The 11 color screenprints, each 100cm by 100cm, were taken from businessman Richard Weisman’s home sometime between Sept. 2 and Sept. 3, detective Mark Sommer of the Los Angeles Police Department’s art theft detail said.
Ten of the portraits feature famous athletes of the 1970s, including golfer Jack Nicklaus, soccer star Pele and figure skater Dorothy Hamill. The other was of Weisman, likely a commissioned portrait.
A US$1 million reward was being offered for information leading to the return of the artwork.
The original prints were on display in Weisman’s dining room and his house was locked up. It wasn’t clear exactly when the silk screen paintings were taken or how the thieves got into the home.
The theft was discovered by the family’s longtime nanny who arrived at the home to find the large prints missing from the walls.
She immediately went to a neighbor’s to call police, Sommer said.
“This was a very clean crime,” Sommer said. “[The home] wasn’t ransacked.”
It wasn’t known exactly how much the prints were worth, but Weisman tried to sell the collection in 2002 for US$3 million.
Weisman’s home contained other valuable artwork but the rest of his collection was untouched.
“The theft of Warhol’s ‘Athlete Series’ represents a profoundly personal loss to me and my family,” Weisman said in a statement.
Weisman, who published a book about his art collection called From Picasso to Pop, declined to comment further, saying he did not want to interfere with the investigation.
A neighbor saw a maroon van in the driveway of Weisman’s home around the time of the robbery, and police are seeking more information about that, Sommer said.
Warhol became internationally famous in the 1960s for his iconic image of a Campbell’s soup can, his avant-garde films and his parties that mixed celebrities, artists, intellectuals and other beautiful people at his New York studio.
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