A Landlord Found a Peculiar Print Hanging in a Vacant Apartment. It Turned Out to Be an Original Picasso That Had Been Missing for Eight Years
When “Torero” vanished from a Milwaukee art gallery in 2018, the owners didn’t know whether they’d ever see it again. The man who found the etching turned it over to the police earlier this month
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/Ellen_Wexler.png)
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/e9/38/e938158b-f130-4222-9bc7-a6b11a5a8354/picasso_print.jpg)
After his tenant moved out, Timothy Dertz noticed a curious artwork on the wall of his Milwaukee apartment. It was a print of a bullfighter, and a thick layer of dust had collected on the top of the frame.
“It was in a back bedroom behind a door,” Dertz tells WISN-TV’s Stephen Cohn. “A very odd placement for such a piece of art.”
The landlord figured that the print must have been hanging in that spot for some time. When he asked an antique dealer to take a look, the two men noticed a signature in green crayon: “Picasso.”
When the pair dug deeper, they realized that the artwork was a 1949 Pablo Picasso etching called Torero (Spanish for “bullfighter”) that had been missing from Milwaukee’s DeLind Fine Art Appraisals since 2018. At the time of its disappearance, it was valued at $35,000 to $50,000.
Dertz handed over the artwork to the Milwaukee Police Department on August 5. Officers contacted Bill DeLind, the art dealer who had co-owned the gallery. He examined the artwork and confirmed that it was the real deal.
“I never expected to see it again,” DeLind tells the Washington Post’s Victoria Craw and Grey Battle. “The fact that it would turn up eight years later in perfect condition is just jaw-dropping.”
Quick facts: Picasso and bullfighting
- The Spanish artist’s father took him to see his first bullfight in 1889, when he was a boy.
- Bullfighting became a prominent theme that showed up in many of his paintings, drawings and prints.
Torero disappeared more than eight years ago, and police tell WISN-TV that the statute of limitations for theft and property crimes in Wisconsin is usually six years. Even so, they say that the incident is still under investigation.
The disappearance was distressing for the owners of the gallery, a small operation with no working security cameras at the time of the theft. On February 16, 2018, “somebody walked in in the middle of the day and picked a Picasso off the wall and walked out with it,” DeLind tells the Associated Press’ Scott Bauer. “Nobody noticed—not me, not my partner.”
DeLind had seen the etching hanging on the wall that very morning. His business partner, Michael Goforth, who died earlier this year, noticed that the artwork wasn’t in its usual spot a few hours later. “I immediately went upstairs,” Goforth told Fox6 News in 2018. “I said, ‘Bill, tell me the Picasso is out on approval.’ And the look he gave me was priceless.”
The gallery announced a $5,000 reward for the piece’s return a few weeks later. When no new leads materialized, they raised the reward to $7,500 and then $10,000. Every year, on the anniversary of the theft, DeLind and Goforth checked in with the police or contacted local media outlets, hoping to keep the search active.
“It was violating,” Goforth told WISN-TV’s Kendall Keys in 2023. “My partner and I have always been open to the public. We’re not stuffy. We like to share these beautiful works of art with everyone in the community. And for someone to just walk in and take advantage of that, it was hurtful.”
Robert Wittman, the founder of the FBI’s art crime team, told the TV station that the gallery owners shouldn’t lose hope, as stolen artworks sometimes make their way back. If they come back on the market, somebody usually finds out about their origins. “So if they just sit tight,” he said, “eventually it does show up.”
That’s exactly what happened earlier this month. When Dertz learned of the theft, he became quite anxious about his unwitting involvement, spending a night pacing and “freaking out,” his girlfriend, Natassha Delgado, tells the Washington Post’s Cole Reynolds. He turned the print over to authorities the next morning. In a statement, the Milwaukee Police Department thanked Dertz, who “recognized the etching print and did the right thing.”
DeLind says that an insurance company, which paid for the Picasso, is now the piece’s rightful owner. But he’s hopeful that he’ll be allowed to hang Torero in the gallery, even for just a few months, so visitors can see it restored to its former spot on the wall.
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/Ellen_Wexler.png)