Picasso most stolen artist

Over 1,000 pieces of art by Pablo Picasso have been stolen or gone missing, more than any other artist in the world. The Spanish artist has 1,147 paintings registered as stolen, missing or disputed, the Daily Mail reported on Sunday. His 1939 work “Woman’s Head” was recently stolen from the National Art Gallery in Athens. The Art Loss Register, an international database, has compiled a list of artists who have had the highest number of works stolen. It also lists the countries where art is mostly taken from. Britain is the most vulnerable place. Next to Picasso is American artist Nick Lawrence, who has 557 works stolen in 2004, while in third place was Russian-French artist Marc Chagall, who has 516 works stolen. Dutch painter-sculptor Karel Appel comes fourth (505 works stolen), just ahead of Salvador Dali (504). Joan Miro, David Levine, Andy Warhol, Rembrandt and Peter Reinicke are the others in the top 10. Other noted artists on the list include Henri Matisse with 205 missing works, Rubens (169), John Constable (155) and Thomas Gainsborough with 97. The Art Loss Register said 40 per cent of thefts occurred in Britain and 16 per cent in the US.