Landlord finds a Picasso in vacant apartment that had been missing for 8 years
A landlord in Milwaukee discovered a stolen 1949 Pablo Picasso etching, 'Torero,' in a vacant apartment after it had been missing for eight years. The artwork, originally valued at up to $50,000, was stolen from a local gallery in 2018.
Why it matters
This recovery highlights the challenges of art security and the potential for long-lost stolen cultural property to resurface in unexpected residential settings.
When an original Picasso disappeared from a Milwaukee gallery in 2018, owners wondered if they would ever see it again. But in August 2026, a man turned the art over to the police. Timothy Dertz noticed an intriguing artwork on the wall of his apartment after his tenant moved out. When he asked an antique dealer to take a look, the two men noticed a signature in green crayon: 'Picasso', reported Smithsonian Magazine.The artwork was a print of a bullfighter and a thick layer of dust had collected on the top of the frame. The landlord figured that the print must have been hanging in that spot for some time. “It was in a back bedroom behind a door,” Dertz told WISN-TV’s Stephen Cohn.
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