Munch masterpieces robbed in daylight

Armed robbers stole The Scream and another masterpiece by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch on Sunday in a bold daytime raid on an Oslo museum p...

Armed robbers stole The Scream and another masterpiece by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch on Sunday in a bold daytime raid on an Oslo museum packed with terrified tourists. Two masked robbers ran into the Munch Museum, threatened staff with a handgun and forced people to lie down before grabbing The Scream, an icon of Existentialist angst showing a waif-like figure against a blood-red sky, and Madonna.

Some stunned tourists said they feared they were victims of a terror attack. The men yanked the masterpieces from the wall, walked out the front door and escaped in a black Audi car driven by a third man who had been waiting outside, police said.

Worth millions of dollars, the pictures are among Munch’s best-known even though he produced several similar versions of both. Madonna shows a mysterious bare-breasted woman with flowing black hair.

‘‘We’re following all possible leads … but we don’t know who did this,’’ police detective chief inspector Kjell Pedersen told a news conference. One of the thieves spoke during the robbery — in Norwegian. The paintings were later cut from their frames which were found smashed and scattered in an Oslo street. The car was separately found abandoned a few km (miles) away. Munch, a founder of modern Expressionism who lived from 1863 to 1944, painted both works as part of a series about love, angst and death. —(Reuters)

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