It's easy to steal a Picasso, but then what?

Art gives pleasure, brings happiness, solace... and pays good dividends, too. The healthy profits attract thieves, people who "seek the best risk-reward ratio," writes Julian Radcliffe, president of Art Loss Register (ARL), an international archive of lost and stolen artworks. "The theft of art or antiques, which have a wide international market (as long as they are not very well-known pieces) makes for large benefits."

Typically, stealing artworks and antiques does not require the use of violence, and law enforcement officials (except in cases with extensive media coverage) cannot devote themselves full-time to solving these crimes. In Britain, increasingly strict rules from insurance companies have forced private collectors - the main targets of art theft - to beef up their security measures. But in recent years, daring delinquents have also stolen art from several museums.

A Madrid scrap dealer was offered an iron sculpture by the Basque artist Chillida for just 30 euros

Great works of art do not sell. You have to let them "cool off," for years, or even decades

According to the Art Crimes Investigation Association (ARCA), there are around 100,000 art thefts a year across the world. "But many items are recovered," asserts Antonio Tenorio, chief inspector of the Historical Heritage Brigade, which investigates these cases in Spain - a country that is not especially hard hit by the art thieves.

"Our museums have excellent security measures, and the police have closed off the art market, and this makes selling stolen artworks very difficult. The moment they move, they are recovered," he says.

Tenorio still remembers the day in 2009 when they recovered a Flemish painting on wood that had been stolen from a church in Trujillo (Cáceres) more than 23 years ago. "The moment it went on sale at Feriarte it was discovered."

It took far less time to solve the case of the theft of 17 artworks from the Madrid home of the business tycoon Esther Koplowitz, in August 2001. The case caused a commotion because the collection contained works by Goya, Camille Pisarro, Foujita, Peter Brueghel, Gutiérrez Solana and Joaquín Sorolla among others. But not all thieves are found out so easily. The FBI has a dream list of 30,000 missing items that includes hundreds of works by Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Andy Warhol and Auguste Renoir. Some of them have been missing for over two decades.

For instance, what happened to the two Velázquez paintings that were stolen from the Royal Palace in Madrid in 1989? And what about the masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas and Manet that were torn from the walls of the Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990? Or the works by Fernand Léger, Picasso, Matisse, Braque and Modigliani that were spirited away from the Musée d'Orsay in Paris just a year ago? Silence is the only answer, so far. Deficient security systems, absent-minded guards and failures of all kinds allowed the thieves to act with notable impunity in all of these cases.

Could they have been stolen on demand? Julian Radcliffe does not think so. "There's no such thing as a private collector with a lot of stolen artworks who tells a thief to steal this or that item to complete his collection. Stolen art is generally found in the hands of people who did not know it was stolen in the first place," he says.

In its 15-year history, the ALR has helped authorities with 700 cases and recovered thousands of items. Thieves had no intention of putting the art up for sale in just three cases.

The Spanish sources agree that art thieves do not have a special psychological profile. They are usually common thieves who occasionally steal art for ransom, or to buy drugs. And even though the trade in stolen art is often cited in third place after drugs and arms as the most lucrative illegal businesses in the world, Radcliffe rejects this ranking.

"That figure is a mistake by the FBI, I'm sorry to say. Stolen art, even if we include illegal archeological sites and jewel theft, represents a significant criminal activity, but nobody has serious statistics on the subject, and there is a big difference between the price of the artworks as such and the price that thieves can obtain when they sell them."

The reason is simple. Great works of art do not sell. You have to let them "cool off," as they say in police jargon, for years, sometimes decades, before putting them back in circulation. And in any case, this entails serious risks. The lesser known art can be placed in secondary markets, which also means selling them for under their estimated value.

Sometimes, thieves' own economic expectations can be surprisingly low. In December 2010, a scrap dealer from Madrid alerted the police after being offered an iron sculpture by the Basque artist Chillida for just 30 euros. It was one of 28 artworks by celebrated artists like Picasso, Botero or Chillida that had been stolen from an industrial warehouse in Getafe (south of Madrid) in November 2010. The news made world headlines, and the thieves were apparently the only people not to know how valuable their booty was, or else they would not have attempted such an absurd sale of a sculpture that was appraised at600,000 euros. Thanks to the scrap dealer, the police were able to recover all 28 artworks, still safe and sound.

The case of the Chillida sculpture illustrates how many art and antiques thieves have a notably deficient art history education. But it also underscores the importance of having images of the stolen item to work with during the investigation. "The most important thing when it comes to properly protecting our cultural heritage is to make inventories, because it is hard to protect what you don't know is there," writes Antonio Cortés, head of the Civil Guard's historical heritage department.

"That is why photographs of stolen art are immediately disseminated worldwide," says Antonio Tenorio. It's the best way to corner the thieves, because they know that they will be unable to sell what they took.