Picasso stolen in 9-yr-old heist found; \’worthless\’ Fragonard goes for £6.5mn

A SUMMARY OF THE MOST EXCITING ART NEWS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE

While we focus on Indian art, we can’t obviously function in a vacuum. It’s a small world and everything is connected, especially on the web. So, let’s train our spotlight across the world map to see what’s going on — from art trends to socio-political issues to everything that affects the great aesthetic global consciousness. Or, let’s just travel the world and have some fun!

Builder arrested over art heist — Picasso found!

Head of a Woman — a painting by Pablo Picasso that was stolen nine years ago during a heist at a Greek gallery — has been recovered. Police say a 49-year-old builder has been arrested for the theft of the painting, and a second work by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. Initially, the raid on the Athens National Gallery in 2012 was blamed on two thieves. The artworks were stripped from their frames in the early morning heist which took only seven minutes to carry out. BBC tells you all about it.

‘Worthless’ painting identified as work of French master — sells for £6.5mn

A painting long-considered \’insignificant\’ by its owner has sold at auction for €7,686,000 or £6.5million after it was identified as being the work of 18th-century French master Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Philosopher Reading had been painted around 1768. Centuries later in January this year, the depiction of a wispy haired man bent over a pile of books was discovered caked in dust in a flat in northern France. Auctioneer Antoine Petit had found it hung on a wall, passed down through generations and assumed to be worthless. The Daily Mail narrates the story.

Oldest directly dated cave art in Southeast Asia found

A handful of cave drawings in Peñablanca town, Cagayan, have just been confirmed to be some 3,500 years old. This makes them the oldest directly dated rock art in Southeast Asia. One of them is a little more than a stick figure barely 5 centimeters long with a wide rectangle of a body, its limbs outstretched as if in supplication. The age of the drawings places them after the arrival in the Philippines of Agta peoples some 10,000 years ago and the later arrival of Austronesian peoples some 4,000 years ago. ABS-CBN News explains it all.

Google Doodle honors Mexican sculptor Pedro Linares López

Some 115 years ago, the artist who sculpted the first “alebrijes,” a mainstay of Mexican folk art — Pedro Linares López — was born on June 29, 1906. In 1945, in the midst of a multi-year battle with illness, Linares experienced a vivid fever dream in which rocks and clouds transformed into otherworldly creatures with strange wings, horns, and teeth. Throughout the dream, the creatures seemed to be saying a made-up word, “alebrijes.” He got better, and these chimeras became his fascinating artworks. 9to5Google dissects the tribute.