Pablo Picasso's Tete de Femme was stolen from the Lefevre Gallery in London's Mayfair on March 6, 1997, by an armed robber. The theft belongs to a recurring late-20th-century pattern in which portable, high-value modern works were taken from galleries rather than large museums. Its immediate drama was heightened by the Mayfair setting and by the work's rapid recovery about a week later. Although less culturally seismic than the major museum thefts of the period, the incident is a useful marker of how modern masters had become both blue-chip market assets and targets for opportunistic crime in the 1990s London art trade.
The case reinforced the security risks surrounding gallery-held modern masterpieces.
Artists involved
Where it happened Lefevre Gallery, City of Westminster
