Dutch police have detained a 23-year-old man in connection with the theft of Andy Warhol’s famous silkscreen series from a gallery in southern Netherlands.
The suspect, whose identity has not been released, was apprehended in Berkel-Enschot, just six kilometers from the gallery in Oisterwijk, where the attempted theft took place last Friday. Thieves targeted all four prints from Warhol’s Reigning Queens series, featuring portraits of reigning monarchs from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Swaziland. During their escape, they left two prints damaged on the street.
Gallery owner Mark Peet Visser reported that the stolen prints remain missing, while the damaged pieces are now with a conservator. Security cameras captured the incident, and Visser described the thieves as amateurs, noting they detonated the gallery doors, causing extensive damage, only to find their vehicle could not fit all four prints.
The thieves forcibly removed two prints, depicting Queen Elizabeth II and Queen Margrethe II, from their frames, causing irreversible damage, according to Visser.
Warhol originally produced multiple prints of the Reigning Queens series, often experimenting with color variations. In 2021, a set of four signed and numbered prints of Queen Beatrix fetched €217,000 at auction in The Hague.
