Stolen Picasso posted to America

A PICASSO painting that was reported stolen from the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2001 has re-emerged - after it was posted to America at Christmas.

The 1911 Cubist artwork La Coiffeuse (The Hairdresser), worth an estimated €2.2million, was seized by officials in Newark. It was in a package with a label that described the contents as an artcraft / toy worth €30, and marked “Joyeux Noel”.

Officials suspect that criminals were hoping to smuggle the masterpiece in the Christmas rush of post and parcels. It was posted from an address in Belgium, the New York Times reports.

“A lost treasure has been found,” the US attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement announcing both the seizure of the artwork and the beginning of the legal process to return it to France.

Authorities did not say whether anyone has been arrested.

The work of art belongs to the French national collection, and was last shown in Munich in 1998, after which it was placed in storage at the Pompidou Centre.

Staff only realised it had disappeared when another museum showed interest in displaying it on loan in November 2001.

The Centre’s president Alain Seban said he was moved by what he described as a “happy ending” and expressed his “deep gratitude” to US customs officials.

La Coiffeuse could be on public display at the Centre as soon as May.

The prolific Picasso is the most stolen artist in the world. There are almost 1,300 missing Picassos on the Art Loss Register.

In 2009, a sketchbook containing 32 of the artist’s pencil drawings worth more than €8m was stolen from Paris’s Picasso museum.

Photo: US Department of Justice