Almost nineteen years ago, in February 2006, four paintings, works by Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso, were stolen from the Museu Chácara do Céu in Rio de Janeiro during Carnival.  All four paintings are still missing today.

Where the Theft Happened

The Museu Chácara do Céu is an art museum situated in the Santa Teresa neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The name of the museum comes from its former life as a residence of Brazilian businessman and art patron Raymundo Ottoni de Castro Maya. Since 1876, that home had been known as Chácara do Céu.

That house was demolished in 1954, and in its place, architect Wladimir Alves de Souza designed a spacious and light-filled modernist-cubist style residence surrounded by large gardens and magnificent views of the city of Rio de Janeiro and Guanabara Bay.

The museum houses an important collection of works of art gathered over decades by Raymundo Ottoni de Castro Maya, known as Castro Maya, and his father, many of which they acquired in trips to France.

The museum’s art collection is grouped in three categories: European Art, Brazilian Art and the Brazilian Collection. The European Art collection includes paintings, drawings and prints by well-known artists from the European continent, including Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró.

The museum’s Brazilian Art Collection contains works of 20^th century Brazilian artists, including:

• Alberto da Veiga Guignard, a painter renowned for his depictions of the landscapes of Minas;
• Gerais Di Cavalcanti, who sought to create a pure Brazilian art form;
• Iberê Camargo, an Expressionist painter and sculptor known for his use of vibrant color and texture and dynamic composition;
• Antonio Bandeira, an Abstract artist and master colorist; and
• Cãndido Portinari. Portinari, a neo-realist painter, is considered to be one of the most important and prolific Brazilian painters. Guerra e Paz (War and Peace), two monumental paintings by Portinari, were given by Brazilian government to the United Nations in 1956 and are on permanent exhibition at the United Nations General Assembly Building in New York. 

The Brazilian Collection includes 17th and 18th centuries maps, along with oil paintings, watercolors, drawings and engravings related to Brazil and other South American locations. The museum also houses the Castro Maya Library, with a significant collection of almost 8,000 copies of Brazilian and European art and literature books, as well as publications and articles by leading travelers of the early 19th century, such as:

• Maria Graham, a British travel writer who provided a first-hand account of Brazil’s transformation from a Portuguese colony to an independent nation;
• Maximilian von Wied-Neuwied, a German explorer and naturalist who led  a pioneering expedition to southeast Brazil;
• Sir Henry Chamberlain, a British officer and artist who painted a series of cityscapes of Rio de Janeiro;
• William Gore Ouseley, a British diplomat who served in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires; and
• Victor Frond, a French photographer whose images of Rio de Janeiro and the surrounding coffee and sugar cane plantations are considered to be the “most ambitious photographic work” in Brazil in the 19^th century.*

How the Theft Happened

On February 24, 2006, in the midst of Carnival, a rare violent art theft took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. On that date, while a samba band played outside, a small group of gunmen entered the Museu Chácara do Céu while it was open to visitors. The gunmen threatened the three unarmed security guards with hand grenades, forcing the guards to disable the alarm and security camera systems.

In a theft that took only thirty minutes, the thieves very selectively took only four paintings, each of which was secured only by nylon threads, from the walls: The Dance by Pablo Picasso, The Two Balconies by Salvador Dali, Luxembourg Gardens by Henri Matisse and Marine by Claude Monet. They also took a book, Toros, with illustrations by Picasso.

According to the police, one museum guard who tried to stop the thieves was hit in the face, while another who attempted to yank the Picasso from the hands of one of the thieves was hit over the head with a weapon. But the thieves were not yet quite finished for the night. On their way out of the museum with the stolen paintings, they mugged several museum visitors at gunpoint, taking those patrons’ cellphones, cameras and wallets. The thieves were then able to blend into the reveling, samba-dancing Rio Carnival crowd.

In March 2006, the BBC reported that, according to police, the Matisse painting, Luxembourg Gardens, had been advertised for sale on a Russian internet auction site for £7.4 million (approximately $13 million USD). To date, however, none of these paintings have been recovered.

How to Identify These Missing Pieces of History

Why These Missing Pieces of History are Important

According to Vera de Alencar, the director of the museum at the time, the thieves targeted the most valuable works in the museum, demonstrating that they knew exactly what they were taking. “Dali’s picture, for example, is the only one by him on public exhibition in Latin America,” Ms. De Alencar said.

Interestingly, this is not the first time that two of these paintings have been stolen from the Museu Chácara do Céu. On May 3, 1989, six armed men, flashing fake police badges, stole approximately $30 million USD worth of paintings, sculptures and tapestries from the museum. Later that month, police in Rio de Janeiro arrested five men and recovered almost all of the stolen art works. The police, responding to a phone tip, staked out an apartment in Rio’s Botafogo neighborhood, apprehended a man as he was leaving, and discovered the stolen goods, undamaged, inside the apartment. All of the stolen art was recovered except for two Chinese ceramic sculptures from the 7th century and a collection of silverware. Those recovered stolen works included the Dali and Matisse paintings stolen again in 2006.

What to Do if You Know Where This Missing Piece of History Is

If you recognize any of the four paintings stolen from the Museu Chácara do Céu, have any information about them, or know their whereabouts, please call us at +1-202-240-2355 or send us an email at contact@arguscpc.com.

*Charles Ribeyrolles, Brasil Pittoresco: Historia, Descricoes, Viagens, Instituicoes, Colonizacao (Rio de Janeiro: Typographia Nacional, 1859)