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A surveillance camera captured these images of the thief in the gallery. Image used with expressed permission of Venus Over Manhattan gallery.

Dali painting stolen in brazen daytime New York heist

Catherine Saunders-Watson
Catherine Saunders-Watson
A surveillance camera captured these images of the suspect in the gallery. Image used with expressed permission of Venus Over Manhattan gallery.
A surveillance camera captured these images of the suspect in the gallery. Image used with expressed permission of Venus Over Manhattan gallery.

NEW YORK (AFP) – An audacious thief posing as an art lover snatched a Salvador Dali watercolor and ink painting worth an estimated $150,000 from a New York private art gallery this week, police said Friday.

The man walked into the Venus Over Manhattan art gallery on Madison Avenue on Tuesday afternoon, posing as a “potential customer.”

“He removed the painting and he fled,” a police spokeswoman told AFP.

Video surveillance cameras showed the man, in his mid-30s to mid-40s, wearing a black and white shirt and jeans, casually walking out with the painting sticking out of a shopping bag.

Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali’s 1949 “Cartel des Don Juan Tenorio” was on display as part of the gallery’s debut exhibition, which opened in May.

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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

Salvador Dali (Spanish, 1904-1989), 'Cartes de Don Juan Tesorio.' Image used with expressed permission of Venus Over Manhattan gallery.
Salvador Dali (Spanish, 1904-1989), ‘Cartes de Don Juan Tesorio.’ Image used with expressed permission of Venus Over Manhattan gallery.