A Year After It Was Stolen, Banksy’s Paris Mural for the Bataclan Theater Has Been Found in an Italian Farmhouse

Police in central Italy have recovered a Banksy artwork that
was stolen last year from the door of
the Bataclan theater in Paris,
where 90 people were killed in a November 2015 terrorist
attack.

The Carabinieri paramilitary
police in Italy announced yesterday that they discovered the stolen
work in the attic of a farmhouse in the Abruzzo region, near the
Adriatic coast. A group of Chinese nationals were living in the
house but authorities do not believe they were aware of the
artwork, according to the
Associated Press.

In a press conference held on
June 11 in L’Aquila, Italy, police said they were still
investigating how the painting came to the country. No arrests have
yet been made.

“It belongs to the Bataclan,”
Christophe Cengig, a liaison of the French ambassy, said at the
event. “It belongs to all of France, in a sense.” Cengig noted that
the theater owners “were thrilled, very happy” with the
discovery.

Banksy’s painting, which depicts
a somber, veiled woman in white, appeared on one of the theater’s
emergency exit doors in June 2018.

It was intended as a memorial to
the coordinated terrorist attacks that rocked the French capital
the night of November 13, 2015. One hundred and thirty people were
killed that night, 90 of whom were attending a concert at the
Bataclan when gunmen opened fire. The Islamic State later took
credit for the attack.

In January 2019, thieves clad in
dark hoods removed the door with angle grinders. It was one of
several Banksy artworks in Paris stolen after the artist went on a
creative spree in the city in 2018 in a nod to the 50th anniversary
of the May 1968 student uprising.

“Today we are deeply indignant,”
the Bataclan wrote on
Twitter after the work
was stolen. “Banksy’s work, a symbol of memory and belonging for
everyone—locals, Parisians, citizens of the world—was stolen from
us.”

The post A Year After It Was Stolen, Banksy’s Paris Mural
for the Bataclan Theater Has Been Found in an Italian Farmhouse
appeared first on artnet News.