Thief walks out of gallery with a US$20,000 Dali etching

SAN FRANCISCO: For an art heist, it was a simple affair. A man ducked into a San Francisco gallery and walked out less than a minute later holding one of its best pieces: a US$20,000 (about 600,000 baht) Salvador Dali etching.

“I was alone at the gallery and turned my back for a minute, and when I looked, it was gone,” Rasjad Hopkins, an associate director of the gallery, said on Tuesday. “I never saw the person.”

The artwork, a limited-edition handcolored 1960s surrealist etching titled La Girafe en Feu, or “The Giraffe on Fire”, had been sitting on an easel at the gallery, Dennis Rae Fine Art, when it was taken on Sunday.

Normally, the Spanish artist’s work would be tethered to the easel, Mr Hopkins said, but on the day of the theft it was not. A security camera in the gallery was not turned on at the time.

But surveillance footage of the incident obtained by ABC7 News, which Mr Hopkins said he watched with the police, shows a man in a blue cap and a blue Nike shirt enter the gallery, with a second person in pink pants waiting outside.

The man then appears to make his escape with the etching in his right hand.

The piece is one of seven original etchings from a suite of work influenced by Pablo Picasso known as Tauromachie Surrealiste, which translates to “Surrealist bullfighting”.

While the etching was listed at $20,000 by Dennis Rae Fine Art, it could sell for as much as $27,500, said Bruce Hochman, who is the proprietor of a gallery in San Juan Capistrano, California, devoted to authentic works by Salvador Dali.