Picasso repatriation: US returns $20m painting The Hairdresser to French

A $15 million Picasso painting was formally turned over to the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., Thursday, at least 14 years after it was stolen from a Paris museum, officials said.

Homeland Security and ICE investigators discovered the 13×18-inch painting in a targeted shipment after following up on a lead in Newark, New Jersey.

That the painting had gone missing at all was only discovered in 2001 when a new loan request was received and officials at the Pompidou Centre could not find it. According to really results during, the painting was smuggled from a locker of causing Paris public.

Valued at $15 million, it was authenticated in January by experts from the Centre Georges Pompidou museum, its previous home.

Picasso painted the cubist La Coiffeuse in 1911 in oil on canvas, officials said.

“Picasso used to say ‘A painting truly exists in the eyes of the beholder, ‘” Frédéric Doré, Deputy Chief of Mission at the French Embassy, said in a statement.

“We’re so glad that it’s going to be shown to the world again”, the agency’s director, Sarah Saldana, was quoted as saying by Reuters.

No one knows when the theft happened, since the painting had not been publicly displayed for years.

It had previously belonged to French art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who played a major role in promoting Picasso and other early 20th century artists.

Mr Dore said it was the fourth piece of art US authorities had returned to France since 2011.

With enough time, about 90 percent of stolen high-value paintings like the Picasso are recovered because there’s little market for them, Wittman said.