The thief who stole three paintings in 2012 from the National Gallery in Athens including a Picasso, told reporters he intended to sneak back into the gallery nine years after the so-called “heist of the century” and return the works, but “never got round to it”.
Giorgos Sarmatzopoulos, 50, was arrested in 2021 and was released from pre-trial detention last week with an electronic tag.
“Whatever happened was done out of love for art,” he told Greek media last Wednesday. His lawyer said the 50-year-old carried out the theft by himself. “It is simply not believable that such a theft was done by a single person and yet it happened,” he said.
He reportedly took advantage of lax security and stole Pablo Picasso’s “Head of a Woman”,Piet Mondrian’s “Stammer Windmill with Summer House” and Guglielmo Caccia’s “St Diego de Alcala in Ecstasy with the Holy Trinity and the Symbols of Passion”.
