São Paulo police recover eight Matisse prints stolen in library heist

The eight Henri Matisse prints stolen from São Paulo’s Mário de Andrade Library in an armed robbery last December have been recovered, city officials said, eight months after two gunmen fled an exhibition with them.

The São Paulo Civil Police found the prints Thursday in São Bernardo do Campo, in the ABC Paulista industrial region of greater São Paulo, the city’s Municipal Secretariat of Culture and Creative Economy said in a statement. One suspect was arrested.

The recovery followed months of investigation by a specialized unit combatting organized crime, known as Cerco, the secretariat said.

The eight recovered prints all come from Matisse’s 1947 “Jazz” series: Le Clown, Le Cirque, Monsieur Loyal, Cauchemar de l’Éléphant Blanc, Les Codomas, La Nageuse dans l’Aquarium, L’Avaleur de Sabres and Le Cowboy.

Under a delivery record drawn up by the Civil Police on Thursday, the prints were formally handed to a library representative, each identified individually, the secretariat said.

The statement made no mention of five prints by Brazilian modernist Candido Portinari taken in the same robbery. It was unclear whether those works, from Portinari’s “Menino de Engenho” series, had also been recovered.

Thirteen works in all were taken from the library on December 7, when two armed men entered during viewing hours, held a security guard and visitors at gunpoint and fled with the art, Urgent Matter previously reported. The works were on display on the final day of “From Book to Museum,” a joint exhibition between the library and the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo.

São Paulo officials notified Interpol after the theft and released images of the missing works. Police later identified one of the men accused of the heist as Felipe dos Santos Fernandes Quadra, who was arrested in December after being tracked through the city’s Smart Sampa facial-recognition system.

The newspaper Estadão identified the second man as Gabriel Pereira Rodrigues de Mello, who remains at large.

In May, São Paulo police arrested a woman and served warrants on two jailed suspects in an operation targeting an alleged criminal network accused of appraising, hiding and brokering the stolen works, including for possible sale abroad. Investigators identified the alleged mastermind as Laéssio Rodrigues, who was already jailed in a separate case.

“The recovery of these eight works represents news of enormous importance for the culture and heritage of São Paulo. These are works that belong to the city and to the memory of its people,” said Totó Parente, São Paulo’s municipal secretary of culture and creative economy, in a statement.

Parente said that since the robbery, the secretariat has adopted measures to reinforce security protocols at the Mário de Andrade Library and expand protection of its heritage.

“Our commitment is to ensure that these works are preserved and return to fulfilling their cultural function, as part of the public heritage and the memory of the city,” Parente said.

The secretariat added that it has expanded training for the company that provides guards for the library. Thirty guards now work at the Mário de Andrade Library, the statement said.

The secretariat said it would oversee an assessment of the prints’ condition before they are returned to the library’s collection.

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