Thieves take 10 Salvator Dali works from Stockholm art gallery

The works were on loan from Switzerland

STOCKHOLM: Thieves stole bronze sculptures and etchings by surrealist artist Salvador Dali from a gallery in Stockholm in a smash and grab raid in the early hours of Thursday.

The Couleur gallery, in Stockholm’s upmarket Ostermalm district, was holding an exhibition of works by the great Dali containing around 10 pieces by the Spanish artist, news agency TT said. “They were worth 200,000 to 500,000 crowns ($21,000 to $52,000) each. So that is quite a lot of money. It is terrible,” the gallery owner Peder Enstrom told TT.

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The works by Dali were on loan from Switzerland, reported Reuters.

Police said the thieves smashed the glass entry doors of gallery and had made off with a number of pieces. “The scene has been cordoned off so that forensics can carry out an examination,” Stockholm police said in a statement.

The police declined to give any further information.

Born in Catalonia on May 11, 1904, Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his work. The Spaniard’s painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best-known and most easily-recognisable work is The Persistence of Memory, completed in August 1931. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, at times in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media.

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