| Advertisement |
July 19 (UPI) -- Spanish police said they recovered three paintings by artist Francis Bacon that were stolen from a private residence in Madrid in 2015. The paintings were among five taken from the collection of Jose Capelo, a friend of Bacon's, with a combined estimated value of $28.8 million.
Advertisement
Police offered no other details about which paintings have been recovered, nor where they were found, BBC News reported Wednesday.
In May 2016, Spanish police arrested seven people linked to the heist in Madrid. During the theft, jewelry and other valuables were also taken.
Police made the arrests after one of the suspects sent a photo of one of the paintings to authorities, and they were able to track down the person who rented the camera with which the photo was taken.
Another three people linked to the crime were arrested in January after police raided homes in Madrid.
Bacon, who was born in 1909 in Ireland, died in Madrid in 1992 at the age of 82. He was known for his emotionally charged surrealist work. In November 2013, his triptych painting, Three Studies of Lucian Freud, sold for $142.4 million at auction, breaking the record for highest price ever paid for an artwork at auction.
That record was broken in 2015 by a Pablo Picasso painting titled Les femmes d'Alger (Version "O"), which sold for $179.37
