Four paintings taken from the Bührle museum, Zurich

On Sunday 10 February 2008, at about half past four in the afternoon, three masked men came into the museum of the E.G. Bührle Foundation on Zollikerstrasse in Zurich. NZZ, the Zurich newspaper, reports that one of them held a pistol and that about 15 visitors and staff were made to lie on the floor. Two others took four paintings from the main room in about three minutes and drove away in a white car. The canton of Zurich confirms the armed robbery and the four works: Cézanne’s The Boy in the Red Waistcoat, Degas’s Ludovic Lepic and His Daughters, Monet’s Poppies near Vétheuil and Van Gogh’s Blossoming Chestnut Branches.

The Cézanne is an oil on canvas of 79.5 by 64 centimetres. Cézanne painted several versions of this figure, and the stolen one is the Bührle version. The Foundation’s record shows that the collector Emil Bührle bought it on 28 August 1948 for 400,000 Swiss francs. His heirs gave it to the Foundation in 1960. Zurich city police put the value of the four works together at about 180 million francs, which AP reported as $163 million. That is an estimate, not a sale price.

The museum director, Lukas Gloor, said the robbers took the works that were easiest to reach. swissinfo reports that the robbery was not done with knowledge of art. The robbers left behind another Cézanne, a self-portrait.

On Monday 18 February a parking attendant at the Burghölzli psychiatric hospital, a few hundred metres from the museum, reported a white car with two pictures on the back seat. They were the Monet and the Van Gogh, in good condition. The car was an Opel Omega with stolen plates. NZZ reports that a DNA trace in the car led to a man in Serbia whom Zurich police already knew. The canton then ran an operation named Europe Prsluk, after the Serbian word for waistcoat. It lasted four years and drew in up to 30 investigators from six countries. Undercover officers posed as buyers for the Cézanne. The canton says payments of 2.8 million euros were made with show money, and most of it was seized. Other reports give different sums: 1.4 million euros, 1.54 million euros, and a Serbian asking price of 3.5 million euros. The sources do not agree.

On 11 April 2012 Serbian police made arrests in Belgrade, with Swiss officers present, and found the Cézanne built into a car. A Swiss delegation took it back in Belgrade on 23 April and flew it to Zurich. On 27 April all four works were shown at the Kunsthaus Zürich, the city’s art museum. NZZ reports slight damage to the Cézanne’s corner and cuts at the edge of the Degas. Sources differ on the Degas. The canton says it came back several months before April 2012, in secret. The Serbian indictment, as reported, says it was bought back in 2009.

The Special Court in Belgrade convicted four men in January 2014. The Appeals Court in Belgrade confirmed the outcome, as N1 reported on 20 May 2015. Ivan Peković received six years for concealment and an arms offence. Bobe Nedeljkovski received five years and Goran Radojević four, both for concealment. Raško Mladenović received six years for robbery. NZZ gave slightly different figures in 2018. Serbian police arrested Peković again in June 2022, Kurir reports, to serve his sentence. No Swiss trial was found in the sources. NZZ reported in 2018 that two other robbers had not been caught.

The Foundation E.G. Bührle Collection owns the Cézanne. The Kunsthaus Zürich lists it among the Bührle works it shows.