Police in São Paulo have recovered eight engravings by the French artist Henri Matisse that were stolen from a public library in the city eight months ago, officials said this week. A man found with the artworks was arrested, according to Brazil's Civil Police.
The prints belong to Matisse's celebrated 1947 book Jazz, a series of colourful cut-out compositions the artist made late in his career. They were among 13 works taken during an armed robbery on 7 December 2025 at the Mário de Andrade Library in downtown São Paulo, one of Brazil's most prominent public libraries.
A brazen daylight heist
The theft happened while the library was open to visitors. According to the Art Newspaper, two armed men entered the gallery and subdued a security guard and an elderly couple who were visiting the exhibition. The stolen pieces were on display as part of an exhibition organised with the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art, on what turned out to be its final day.
The gunmen also took five works by Cândido Portinari, a Brazilian modernist painter whose illustrations for the 1959 novel Menino de Engenho are considered part of the country's cultural heritage. Those five pieces have not yet been located.
Works found in nearby apartment
According to a police statement reported by AFP, the recovered engravings were found in an apartment in São Bernardo do Campo, an industrial city in greater São Paulo best known internationally as the birthplace of Brazil's car manufacturing sector and of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's trade union career.
“The works, estimated to be worth $200,000, were being held by this man for the mastermind of the heist, police said.”
Police said the man arrested this week was holding the art on behalf of the alleged organiser of the robbery, who was already detained in April in Rio de Janeiro. Investigators believe the theft was carried out by a criminal network involved in appraising, hiding and brokering stolen artworks, according to the São Paulo State Secretariat of Public Security.
Officers had previously carried out searches linked to the case in São Paulo, São Bernardo do Campo, Diadema and Rio de Janeiro as part of an operation Brazilian authorities named Operation Marchand, after the French word for art dealer.
Questions over security at public collections
The daylight robbery prompted debate in Brazil over how well public cultural institutions protect valuable holdings, particularly those on loan or temporary display. The Mário de Andrade Library, a landmark of São Paulo's cultural life since the 1920s, had displayed the Matisse and Portinari works in cabinets secured with steel cables, which the thieves disabled before fleeing towards a nearby metro station, according to reporting by ArtReview.
The recovery of the eight Matisse prints marks significant progress in an investigation that has spanned several Brazilian states over eight months. Authorities have not said whether they expect to recover the missing Portinari works, though the arrest of the alleged mastermind and now a second suspect suggests the wider network is coming under increasing pressure.
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