17/12/2001

The FBI has recovered three paintings by the US artist Norman Rockwell in Brazil valued up to $ 1 million (€ 1.1 million) which had been missing since 1978. The paintings were stolen from a gallery in Minnesota and were found in a farmhouse outside the Brazilian town of Teresopolis. A Rio de Janeiro art dealer discovered the paintings and presented them to Brazilian authorities in December. The original owners of the paintings were the US publishing company Brown & Bigelow Co., (based in the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota) who had used two of the paintings for Boy Scout calendars in 1975 and 1976, while the third Rockwell work was reproduced for the company’s 1954 seasonal calendar. Norman Rockwell died in 1978 at the age 84, and is popular to this day with his whimsical illustrative works of home-spun American life of the 20th century. An exhibition of the artist’s work “Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People” closes at the Salomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York on the 3rd of March 2002. For more information of Rockwell’s work visit the artist’s official web site at http://www.rockwelltour.org. (Andrew Moore)