US returns Picasso’s La Coiffeuse to France

A Picasso worth $15 million is on its way back to Paris 14 years after it was stolen, immigration officials announced Thursday in Washington, D.C. The oil work was stolen from a Paris museum and discovered in New Jersey.

“Picasso used to say: “A painting truly exists in the eyes of the beholder”, said Frederic Dore, deputy chief of mission at the French embassy in Washington, where the painting was formally handed over. Dore stressed that “outstanding Franco-American customs cooperation” made the painting’s return a reality.

The painting was authenticated in January by two experts from the Paris museum and, according to ICE, it had been listed in the Interpol Stolen Works of Art database since its reported theft in 2001.

It had last been publicly displayed in Munich, Germany in 1998 – and no one is clear on where it has been since.

Measuring only 13 by 18 inches but valued at about $15m (£9.6m), the Cubist work was discovered by US Customs officials as it arrived at the Port of Newark last December.

According to authorities, the shipment label described its contents as a low-value handicraft valued at 30 euros (USD 37).

“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.

Spanish Civil Guards carry a box containing Picasso’s painting “Head of a Young Woman” at the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid after being transferred from the French island of Corsica, on August 11, 2015.

“It’s really a great thing to be able to recover a piece of cultural property like this”, said Robert Wittman, a former FBI agent who founded the bureau’s national art crime team and now president of his own art security consultancy.