News Item: 00023

30th Jul 2007

Stolen sculpture chained to fire escape

Source: http://news.independent.co.uk

The recovery of the art work, Transformation - Tree of Life, was the culmination of an extraordinary saga which had begun with a raid on a warehouse, reports Cahal Milmo in an article published in The Independent.

Standing more than two metres high and depicting the Holocaust within its layers of interleaved bronze, it was hardly a run-of-the-mill garden ornament. But it was only when a squad of detectives from Scotland Yard's art and antiques unit arrived to inspect the statue chained to a fire escape at the rear of a block of flats in Streatham, south London, this month, that residents realised the true identity of the one-tonne art work in their midst.

Far from being an unwanted purchase from a DIY store, the sculpture was a £200,000 creation by Helaine Blumenfeld, vice-president of the Royal British Society of Sculptors, which had been stolen in 2005.

Gene Phillips, 64, who has lived on the Manor Court estate for 19 years, said: "I always wondered what it was. It just turned up one day, a big lump of metal, but there was no one around to ask. I've walked past it every day for a couple of years. Then one day these police arrived and said it was a famous statue. I didn't have the faintest clue."

The work by Ms Blumenfeld, who lives in Grantchester, near Cambridge, had been awaiting shipment to Italy for exhibition when it was spirited out of a specialist warehouse in Southwark, south London, in July 2005. Ms Blumenfeld said: "It was taken from a difficult position. I still don't really understand how they were able to get it out. It felt like they had come particularly for that piece. I decided it was just a dead loss. It had not been sold and I had to bear the cost of making it."

The sculpture, which was made in 2003, was this weekend sitting in a secure police warehouse awaiting collection by Ms Blumenfeld. She said: "It was a very important piece for me. It was to commemorate the Holocaust. It was a tree of life, the bottom was twisted as an emblem of many bodies then building up as a symbol of rebirth. It was a piece I really valued and to think that it was stolen to be melted down or re-sold to somebody was terrible."

Still Missing

* Reclining Figure by Henry Moore. Three-metre bronze statue, worth £3m, stolen from the Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, in December 2005.

* The Watchers by Lynn Chadwick. Two-metre figure, one of three, taken from Roehampton University, south-west London, in January 2006.

* Lt George Armstrong by Henry Pegram. First World War Memorial taken from St Leonard's Church, Semley, Wiltshire, in May 2006.

* Bronze sphinxes. Two figures taken from Horsmonden, Kent, in a series of thefts including a church sundial and several statues in June 2006.

* Dancing Girl by William Theed. Marble statue stolen from Dunorlan Park, Tunbridge Wells, in October 2006.