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Showing posts with label sketch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sketch. Show all posts

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Picasso sketch thief admits guilt

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28 October 2011 Last updated at 07:14 GMT Picasso's Tete de Femme The 1965 pencil sketch was recovered without its frame A man who walked out of a San Francisco art gallery with a Picasso sketch under his arm after snatching it from the wall has pleaded guilty to grand theft.

Wine sommelier Mark Lugo, 30, took Tete de Femme from the Weinstein Gallery on 5 July before getting into a cab with the $275,000 (£170,000) 1965 work.

He will be released from prison under supervision on 21 November after getting credit for time already served.

He will then be extradited to New York to face similar art theft charges.

Lugo was arrested within 24 hours after co-operation from the taxi driver and security camera footage from a nearby restaurant that captured Lugo walking away with the artwork.

When officers searched Lugo's apartment, in New Jersey, they found Tete de Femme and other stolen works including a further Picasso, valued at $30,000 (£19,000), and a sketch by French Cubist Fernand Leger, valued at $350,000 (£218,000).

"This is a person who definitely had a taste for the finer things and he didn't like to pay for them," San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said.

Under a plea deal, other charges, including burglary, were dropped.

Lugo's lawyer Douglas Horngrad said his client had been accused of a series of crimes.

"All these things that Mark is alleged to have taken were all taken within a 30-day period with no behaviour like that before and that suggests that there was some psychiatric episode," the lawyer said.

Gallery president Rowland Weinstein praised "really extraordinary police work".

"This piece is a love affair of mine," he added.



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Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Harold Pinter sketch rediscovered

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25 October 2011 Last updated at 11:43 GMT Harold Pinter in 1961 Harold Pinter pictured in the early 1960s when the sketch was written A short sketch written by playwright Harold Pinter more than 50 years ago has been found in archives at the British Library.

The piece, which is a dialogue about umbrellas between two unnamed sunbathing gentlemen, was part of a revue at Nottingham Playhouse in 1960.

Pinter's widow Lady Antonia Fraser told The Guardian she had been "completely unaware" it existed.

The British Library acquired Pinter's papers a year before his death in 2008.

But Umbrellas was uncovered by researchers delving into the Lord Chamberlain's collection. The 10-minute piece featured in a show called You, Me and The Gatepost.

Before 1968, copies of every work intended for performance had to be submitted to the state office for licensing and were retained in its archives.

The show was given the green light without any cuts and considered to be an "excellent entertainment".

Lady Antonia called the sketch - which has been reproduced in full in The Guardian - "fun" and said that her family had been acting out the sketch, in which the two protagonists are simply called 'A' and 'B'.

Continue reading the main story

A: The weather's too much for me today. PAUSE

B: Well, you're damn lucky you've got your umbrella

A: I'm never without it, old boy. PAUSE

B: I think I'd do well to follow your example.

Copyright The Estate of Harold Pinter 2011

"I want to act B, which is the better part, but so far I've only managed to act A.

"We're really waiting for some really good actors to do it," she added.

Jamie Andrews, head of English and Drama at the British Library, said the sketch offered "an exciting and important opportunity for all lovers and scholars of Pinter to study a piece of writing that even the writer himself had not retained".

The piece is punctuated by a series of pauses, which are considered to be a hallmark of Pinter's work.

At the time of The Umbrella's performance, Pinter, then aged 29, was enjoying success with a West End production of his play The Caretaker.

The sketch's rediscovery coincides with the opening of the newly-rededicated Harold Pinter Theatre in London.

Actress Thandie Newton is making her West End debut in Death and The Maiden, the first production in the renamed Comedy Theatre.

Pinter, whose other stage plays include The Birthday Party and The Homecoming, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2005.



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