Simon Wade
SPANISH police have tracked down a valuable piece or art by renowned Spanish artist Joan Miro that had been missing since in got ‘lost in the post’.
Investigators tracked it down to a London auction where the piece was up for sale with an estimated price of €10,000.
It had gone missing in July when a Spanish collector sold and shipped the work of art to another collector in London, who claims never to have received the shipment.
Investigations began after the painting, from Miro’s famed Gaudi series, had not reached its destination.
Police eventually discovered that it had been delivered in error to the wrong London address.
However, the recipient claimed he had returned the classic to Spain, when it was actually sitting in an auction house waiting to be sold.
Immediately classed as an International Stolen Work of Art, Policia Nacional handed over files to UK authorities, who seized the painting.
Shortly after returning the work to its rightful owners in Spain, the collector said the piece could have been sold for more than €10,000.
Who was Joan Miró?
Joan Miro (20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.
A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundacio Joan Miro was established in his birthplace in 1975 and another in his native Mallorca in 1981.
Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism but with a personal style, sometimes also veering into Fauvism and Expressionism.
He was notable for his interest in the unconscious or the subconscious mind, reflected in his re-creation of the childlike.
In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s on-wards, Miro expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, and declared an ‘assassination of painting’ in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.
