Six paintings were stolen early Wednesday morning during a break-in at the VDL Art Gallery in the Eindhoven shopping centre the Heuvel Gallery. Five of these are by artist Cornelis Lemair, and one by Kees Bol. According to Lemair, the paintings had only been hanging there for a week.
The theft was discovered Wednesday morning by gallery owner Jan van de Loo. “We are perplexed and shocked and overwhelmed. They probably came in through the back door at about 5:30 this morning and made off with six paintings. We have yet to see the security camera footage.” The police were present at the gallery on Wednesday to investigate. It is still unclear to what extent the alarm worked. One of the walls in the gallery showed a gaping hole where the paintings hung.
Cornelis Lemair himself is shocked by the news. “I almost fell off my chair when I heard it this morning. The paintings had only been on show in the gallery for a week. We were going to make an insurance arrangement, but it hadn’t come to that yet, unfortunately.”
According to Van de Loo, the paintings represent a value of 50 to 60 thousand euros. That value will probably not be of much use to the thieves, because the paintings have been marked ‘stolen’ since Wednesday morning. The gallery has already filed a report.
In 2020, Studio040 made a news item about the exhibition 100 years of Eindhoven painting, which was held in the VDL Art Gallery at the time, and which also included work by Cornelis Lemair.
Source: https://studio040.nl
Translated by: Simge Taşdemir
