Theft of Vargas original

Alright, which one of you did it?

An audacious thief with an eye for value strolled into a Larkspur art gallery Saturday afternoon and ran out with a Playboy magazine pinup, police investigators said.

The thief apparently knew what he was doing. The pinup, a one-of-a-kind watercolor of a nude done for Playboy in 1960, was on sale for $75,000, according to gallery owner Tony Pernicone.

It was the first of about 150 done for the men's magazine by renowned pinup artist Alberto Vargas.

"It is one of the most important, if not the most important, painting Vargas did for Playboy," said Aaron Baker, corporate curator for Playboy. "Its replacement value is higher because it is such an early painting, a very iconic one."

The painting features a seductive, nude redhead in white high heels.

Pernicone, owner of Avanti Fine Art at 2201 Larkspur Landing Circle, purchased the watercolor last year at an auction in Los Angeles. He had it displayed near a gallery window.

About 4 p.m. Saturday, the thief casually walked into the gallery, waited until no one was playing attention to him and ran out with the artwork, police investigators said.

Pernicone said he was on the phone with his assistant when a man wearing a dark blue hooded sweatshirt entered the small gallery, which is near the Larkspur ferry terminal.

"I was looking down, writing some information. He must have been watching me," Pernicone said. "I saw someone come in from the corner of my eye, but I wasn't paying any attention."

The thief walked by the gallery's less valuable, but more accessible, Picasso and Chagall reproductions to reach the dazzling pinup original, Pernicone said.

The suspect struggled to remove the painting from its easel before fleeing from the gallery. Pernicone chased the thief for several hundred yards,

but since Pernicone has three broken toes and uses a cane, he quickly lost sight of the thief on East Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.

It was a rainy day, making for few witnesses in the quaint commercial strip on the bay waterfront, which the gallery shares with a nail salon, sandwich shop and other restaurants.

Pernicone said the slender suspect kept his face hidden with a hood and quickly disappeared on the busy boulevard.

Police said the thief's quick escape was probably aided by a getaway driver, though no one reported seeing a car.

The heist took less than a minute, Pernicone said, a rather simple burglary of a very pricey piece of art.

"I don't have a lot of wall (space), so I have to use easels for my paintings," said Pernicone, who has owned the gallery for about two years.

He said he has a security system for the gallery at night, but didn't think his most valuable painting would face such danger in the middle of the day in an otherwise quiet neighborhood.

He wonders whether the thief knows the value of the painting he snatched or was simply dazzled by the seductive lady in the window.

"I don't think the person was a collector, I think he just liked the painting," said Theron Kabrich, co-owner of San Francisco Art Exchange, which holds one of the largest gallery collections of Vargas' prints in the country.

Kabrich said the thief won't have much luck selling the painting because it is so well known among collectors. "When he finds out what he has, he'll probably find a way to drop it off without being noticed."

Vargas is internationally renowned for his nude "Vargas girl" drawings -- seductively posed models with long legs and shapely figures.

The prints were popular in magazines, calenders and advertisements in the mid-20th century and have won the acclaim of younger generations, frequently featured in tattoos and on skateboards.

Vargas drew the "Vargas girl" for Esquire before the prints became a monthly feature in Playboy in 1960.

Most of the approximately 150 paintings from the monthly series hang in the halls of Playboy's offices, but a few have entered the market.

Pernicone said he bought the first in the series, a watercolor painting of model Jeanne Dean featured in the October 1960 Playboy issue, at a Butterfields auction in Los Angeles in June 2002.

Pernicone said that recovering the historic painting means more to him than simply recovering its value.

"It's covered by insurance, but that doesn't mean anything to me. This was historically important. This is what started (Vargas') career with Playboy, " Pernicone said. "The real tragedy is that this is a part of America's illustrated history."

Vargas is one of the most overrated pinup artists.

I could be giving my actual opinion, or I could be lying to make you think I wasn't the one who took it.

I would return it, but it now has a small
stain on it. Can't figure out how that happened? Plus, i'm going blind and can't find my way back to the gallery.

If the thief doesn't really know the value of it, it could end up in his bedroom hanging next to his poster of Stone Cold Steve Austin or Jeff Gordon. Really sad.

http://www.samgambino.com

Seventy-five thousand dollars! I'd say that rates a felony. I image the thief will be sweating when he realizes what kind of time he's facing for such stupidity-especially since the present possessor (either the thief or the one who commissioned the crime) will want to show it off. It's sad what collector greed does to people.

Is a crappy painting really worth the possible consequences?

[ Edited by: Atomic Cocktail on 2003-12-09 15:59 ]