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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.

US customs seizes stolen Dali painting, returns it to owner

Tom Hoepf
Tom Hoepf
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) – A stolen Salvador Dali painting worth an estimated $150,000 has been recovered after being mailed back to the United States from Greece, police said Saturday.

An unidentified man posing as a potential customer snatched the 1949 gouache and watercolor piece Cartel des Don Juan Tenorio from New York’s Venus Over Manhattan in a brazen heist on June 19, casually walking out of the month-old art gallery with the frame sticking out of a bag.

A police spokesman told AFP that the surrealist work was mailed from the Greek capital Athens and recovered Thursday.

“U.S. Customs seized it and (New York Police Department) detectives got it from them and returned it to the owner,” he said, adding that no one has been arrested in connection with the heist.

Dali’s 1949 work was on display as part of the gallery’s debut exhibition, which opened in May on Manhattan’s swank Upper East Side.

Surveillance video showed a balding man wearing a checkered shirt leaving with the loot.