The Picasso and Mondrian taken from Athens

At about 4.30 in the morning of Monday 9 January 2012, a thief entered the National Gallery in Athens through a balcony door. Hellenic Police say the visit lasted about seven minutes. Alarms had sounded from about 7.58 the evening before. The only guard found nobody and switched the alarm off. It was the last day of an exhibition, before a long closure for renovation.

Three works were taken. One was Pablo Picasso’s Woman’s Head, an oil on canvas of 56 by 40 centimetres. Police and the ministry date it to 1939, while eKathimerini and ARTnews say 1934. Picasso gave it to the Greek people in 1949, in tribute to Greek resistance to the German-led occupation of 1941 to 1944, and wrote a dedication on the back. The second was Piet Mondrian’s Stammer Windmill with Summer House, painted in 1905. Alexandros Pappas gave it to the gallery after buying it in 1963. The third was a drawing of St Diego de Alcala by Guglielmo Caccia, given in 1907. The thief dropped a second Mondrian while fleeing.

An inspector’s report on the gallery, relayed by AFP in April 2012, found a security system not updated since about 2000, areas without cameras, no radios and untrained guards. For nine years the case stayed open. The Guardian reports that police believed an organised gang was behind it.

On 28 June 2021, Athens security police found a 49-year-old builder and house painter, Giorgos Sarmantzopoulos. The Ministry of Culture says he confessed and led officers to a wooded area at Porto Rafti, in Attica, where the two paintings lay packed. The BBC places the find in a dry riverbed at Keratea, nearby on the same coast. Police told AP the paintings were wrapped in plastic and in good condition. Police said he acted alone. One 2023 account says a second person may have kept watch, which he denies. As The Art Newspaper reports his statement, he watched the building for about six months, had no plan to sell and wanted to own a work. The culture minister said the dedication made the Picasso impossible to sell or show.

The drawing did not come back. He told police he cut his hand, that the sheet was damaged, and that he flushed it away. At trial the lawyer and collector Stelios Garipis said a Florence auction house offered the drawing in 2019, unsold, and that foreign experts judged it the same work. The gallery’s lawyer called it a fake. No source says it was tested or returned.

On 20 January 2023 an Athens court found him guilty of aggravated theft of items of artistic value from a public collection. It gave him six years, suspended pending appeal, because of his good conduct afterwards. The gallery gave the court book values, not sale prices: 2 million euros for the Picasso, 200,000 euros for the Mondrian and 1,000 euros for the drawing. On 24 September 2025 an appeals court cut the sentence to five years, without suspension. Kathimerini says that is the minimum for the offence and that, after 14 months in custody, he should serve a few more months. At the appeal the gallery’s lawyer said photos on his phone pointed to an intent to sell. The defence said there was no evidence of any attempt to sell.

The two paintings went back to the gallery. CultureNow reported in November 2022, citing the news site newsit.gr, that they were on show again after conservation. The sources consulted do not say whether he appealed further, and the Caccia drawing is still unaccounted for.