Stolen Picasso Prints Found Under Pile of Clothes in French Riviera Apartment

Six stolen prints by Pablo Picasso have been safely recovered from an apartment in the French Riviera, where, according to investigators, the works were stowed beneath a pile of clothes and toolboxes, not too far from the restaurant from which they were pilfered.

The theft happened almost exactly one month before French investigators found the prints, which regularly hang in the restaurant L’Amandier, located in Mougins, the village where Picasso famously resided at the time of his death in 1973.

At around 2 a.m. on October 1, two men, both wearing gloves and masks, entered the restaurant through a door and stole the prints in under a minute. In the morning, the restaurant’s owner, Matthieu Autant, discovered the works were missing and proceeded alert local authorities, which assigned the task of retrieving the stolen art to officers in nearby Cannes.

La Libre, a Belgian outlet, reported that the prints were worth the equivalent of a little more than $112,000—not much, as far as Picassos go. But, speaking to the French publication Le Monde, lieutenant colonel Guillaume Plaidy said that the works “were not easy works to sell,” all the more so because lacked the know-how required to find a buyer for these works. Instead, these men were “known more for drug and weapons offenses,” Plaidy said.

Still, Plaidy added, “We had to act quickly: Works like these carry a high risk of being resold and never returning to the art market.”

On November 3, 40 gendarmes searched two apartments and found the works in the process. Seven men, all aged between 18 and 30, were subsequently arrested. Those men include three burglars and four accomplices, per Le Monde.

Though the theft of the prints may be relatively minor, it gained notice because it comes at a moment of heightened attention to art theft in Europe. Following the storied Louvre heist of 2025, works have been stolen from institutions ranging from the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, to the Magnani Rocca Foundation, near Parma, Italy.

Within France, the quick recovery of the Picasso prints seemed to inspire hope. Leisa Paoli, head of the Female Artists Museum of Mougins, said, “We are delighted to be able to recover them; I thought they might have already left the country.”

Autant, the owner of L’Amandier, seemed both relieved and a little exasperated. He told the channel France 2, “We may have to rethink the security arrangements.”