A Picasso Torero etching recovered from a vacated Milwaukee apartment has been returned to the gallery from which it was stolen in 2018, after a landlord found it hanging in a back room and brought it to police. The work, an etching made in 1949, had been valued at between $35,000 and $50,000 at the time of its disappearance.
Timothy Dertz was clearing out a property after a tenant had left when he came across a depiction of a man behind a door in the farthest room of the apartment. He later described it as ‘a very odd placement for such a piece of art’. Taking it to an antique dealer, Dertz noted the Picasso signature in green crayon. Together, the two men identified the work as Torero, an etching by Pablo Picasso, and then found that an identical piece had been reported stolen from a Milwaukee art gallery.
Concerned he might somehow become entangled in the unresolved theft, Dertz went directly to the police and told them everything he had established. In August, Milwaukee police contacted Bill DeLind, owner of the gallery from which the work had been taken. DeLind confirmed it was genuine.
The Picasso Torero Etching Recovered in Remarkable Condition
‘I never expected to see it again,’ DeLind told the Washington Post. ‘The fact that it would turn up 8 years later in perfect condition is just jaw-dropping.’
The gallery had initially offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the etching’s return, raising it incrementally over the years. Eventually, after their insurer had compensated them for the loss, they gave up hope of seeing Torero again.
Two details from the Spokesman-Review add context to the recovery. First, the etching is the ninth print in a series of 30, which made identification through comparison with known examples straightforward once the dealer and Dertz had a name to work with. Second, the recovery is less surprising when set against a wider pattern: according to the Art Loss Register, which maintains a database of missing works, Picasso is the world’s most-stolen artist, with more than 1,000 of his works currently listed as missing.
How Stolen Art Finds Its Way Home
The process that led to Torero‘s return follows a well-worn path. The Smithsonian Magazine has quoted the founder of the FBI’s Art Crimes Unit as advising victims of art theft to sit tight, on the basis that stolen works frequently surface through due diligence at galleries and auction houses. Antique dealers can only appraise a piece properly by establishing what it is and where it came from, and that process of identification regularly brings stolen art back to its rightful owners.
In this case, the chain ran from a departing tenant to a conscientious landlord to an alert dealer to the police. None of those steps required specialist knowledge of the art world; they required only that each person passed on what they had found rather than quietly setting it aside.
DeLind’s gallery had long since accepted the insurance settlement and stopped expecting a resolution. The etching’s return in what he described as perfect condition, eight years after it disappeared from his walls, closes a chapter that had seemed permanently open.
DeLind has confirmed the work is the real piece. With the Picasso Torero etching recovered and its provenance established, the next step will be for Milwaukee police to pursue the question of how it ended up in a residential apartment in the first place.
