Pitt Drops $1M for Painting

Collectors buy, but enthusiasm is low at Swiss art fair

(NEWSER) - Art Basel, the world's most prestigious (and most expensive) art fair, opened Tuesday in Switzerland amid grumbles that works for sale were of middling quality and overpriced. "Now there are just too many art fairs," said a director of PaceWildenstein, one of New York's biggest galleries. As the New York Times writes, this year's Art Basel is loaded with well-known names at the expense of new discoveries. More»

4 paintings snatched from Swiss museum recovered

(NEWSER) - The four 19th-century paintings stolen from a Swiss museum have reportedly been found in an unlocked car parked outside a Zurich psychiatric hospital. Although police have not yet confirmed the find, Swiss media are reporting that the $168 million worth of loot—one work each by Cézanne, Degas, Monet, and van Gogh—has been recovered. The paintings were stolen by masked gunmen on February 10. More»

German museum's paintings stolen from exhibition near Zurich

(NEWSER) - Thieves stole two Picasso paintings that belong to a German museum from a Swiss art gallery where they had been on display, the Guardian reports. The pilfered works, Tete de Cheval and Verre et Pichet, were on loan from the Sprengel Museum. Combined, they're worth $4.5 million, AFP reports. More»

Showcases darker tones of earlier work

(NEWSER) - For the first time in five years, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has added a new piece to its collection—and it looks a little different from your standard Vincent van Gogh. This one is an 1882 watercolor whose tones are much darker than those the artist later adopted. The painting shows what van Gogh called a "lonely and melancholy" dead willow leaning over a pond near the Hague. The young artist immediately wanted to paint it: "I'm going to attack it tomorrow morning," he wrote to his brother. More»

Pablo Picasso makes 2 appearances

(NEWSER) - Following the record-breaking sale of Edvard Munch's The Scream , the Guardian takes a look at the other biggest sales of art at auction. The top five:

1. Edvard Munch, The Scream, $119.9 million.
2. Pablo Picasso, Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust, $106.5 million.
3. Alberto Giacometti, L'homme qui Marche I, $105.2 million.
4. Pablo Picasso, Boy With a Pipe, $104.2 million.
5. Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II, $87.9 million.