GREEK GOV’T PRESENTS STOLEN PICASSO PAINTING

Nine years after it was stolen, the Greek Ministry of Culture presented the recovered painting "Woman's Head" by Pablo Picasso to the public on Tuesday, Alexia Angelopoulou and Takis Tsafos reported for Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa).

A 49-year-old Greek man was arrested on Monday and had confessed to the art theft from the Athens Pinacotheca in 2012. The police had discovered the "Woman's Head" and an early painting by the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian in a ravine about 50 kilometers from Athens.

The paintings had previously been hidden in a warehouse, the ministry said on Tuesday.

The thief had been watching the Pinacotheca for months and apparently even knew the time when the guards went out for a smoke.

When asked why he stole the Picasso painting, the Mondrian and a work by the Italian Guglielmo Caccia, he is said to have said that he grabbed the first paintings he encountered.

Picasso's "Woman's Head" not only has an estimated value of around 16.5 million euros ($19.6 million), it has a very special meaning for Greece: The painting from 1939 was presented to Greece after World War II by Picasso himself in recognition of the country's resistance to Nazism. The dedication on the rear of the painting, dated 1946, reads: "To the Greek people as a tribute by Picasso.”

This proved to be his undoing, for the Picasso in particular, as a possession of the Athens Pinacotheca, was also unsellable on the black market: A new owner would never have been able to make the painting public and would also have been legally prosecuted.

While the "Woman's Head" is intact, the Mondrian is said to be slightly damaged, according to the Ministry of Culture. The Caccia painting is said to have been destroyed by the thief.

The police had already had the man in their sights when he tried to contact Dutch art dealers a few days ago. "Today a great wound heals," said Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni.

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