A Norwegian painting featuring $16 311 (about R117 000) of banknotes glued to a canvas proved too tempting to thieves, who made off with it at the weekend, the gallery that displayed it said on Monday.
About 100 000 bills of 1 000 kroner each were glued to Norwegian artist Jan Christensen’s 2m-by-4m canvas entitled Relative Value, said the MGM Gallery in Oslo.
The robbers broke into the gallery on Saturday night by smashing a window. Then, proceeding methodically, they cut each bill off the canvas individually and left the cumbersome frame behind.
“Apparently they are nice because they took the canvas out of the frame,” gallery owner Marina Gerner-Mathisen said.
The thieves then left the building. “When the security people arrived a couple of minutes later, they were gone,” she said.
A police investigation was under way, she said. — AFP