13 September 2024 , 09:03
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Two men have been charged with burglary after Banksy’s Girl with Baloon artwork was stolen from a London gallery.
CCTV footage showed an individual smashing the window of Fitzrovia’s Grove Gallery for about 30 minutes before heading inside at about 11pm Sunday.
They were seen sprinting out on foot moments after with the piece in hand through Tottenham Court Road in front of cars and pedestrians.
The gallery was about to finish its two-week exhibition featuring Banksy artworks – including the £270,000 Girl with Balloon.
An investigation into the missing piece was launched and later referred to the Flying Squad, a unit of the Metropolitan Police that deals with serious crimes.
The gallery, which police did not name but said was on central London’s New Cavendish Street, has since had the artwork returned.
The gallery’s windows had been shattered (Picture: CLICK NEWS AND MEDIA)
Girl with Balloon was the only one of the Banksy exhibition pieces taken (Picture: CLICK NEWS AND MEDIA)
Gallery curators say the exhibit was to pay homage to Banksy (Picture: CLICK NEWS AND MEDIA)
Grove Gallery manager Lindor Mehmetaj learnt that Girl with Balloon had been taken on Monday.
Gallery CEO James Ryan said: ‘The swift action of the Flying Squad from the outset was incredible from start to finish, and I can’t thank them enough for every effort they have made. To say this theft was devastating and heartbreaking is an understatement.
‘The Banksy works were on display to pay homage to an incredible artist and to allow everyone to enjoy them. To witness such a brazen theft, carried out on foot, was just shocking.’
James Ryan, the CEO of the gallery, said the piece being stolen was ‘heartbreaking’ (Picture: CLICK NEWS AND MEDIA)
Girl with Balloon has since been recovered and returned to the gallery (Picture: CLICK NEWS AND MEDIA)
The framed artwork on display (Picture: CLICK NEWS AND MEDIA)
Girl with Baloon is a series of stencil murals by the enigmatic artist that popped up over the capital in the 2000s, with the first sprayed outside a Shoreditch shop in 2002.
They show a small child in black and out reaching out towards a red, heart-shaped balloon.
A framed Girl with Balloon, a 2006 spray paint on canvas, was at the centre of Banksy’s most spectacular pranks in 2018.
Moments after selling at auction for £1million at Sotheby’s in London, it was spontaneously but partially shredded in a stunt the artist said was a shot against the art collecting world.
The piece effectively self-destructed by, in front of gawking and gasping art collectors, slowly passing through a secret shredder hidden in the frame.
‘Going, going, gone…’ the anonymous artist wrote on his Instagram.
But the piece, renamed Love Is in the Bin, was resold at the same auction house for £18,600,000 three years later.