Card scam painting mystery solved - Anita Klein’s ‘Maia is Upset’ returned to Boundary Gallery by eagle-eyed art lover

Published: 18 March 2011
by DAN CARRIER

AN eagle-eyed art lover has helped a gallery reclaim a painting that was stolen more than two years ago.

The Boundary Gallery in St John’s Wood, run by Agi Katz, was the victim of a conman who stole three paintings by celebrated contemporary painter Anita Klein from a show in 2009.

But this week one of the paintings was returned to the gallery in Boundary Road after someone who had once bought a Klein print spotted it for sale for £2,500 in the window of a Moroccan knick-knack shop on Harrow Road and was so surprised to see it available, she sent the artist a picture to check it was not a forgery. 

Ms Katz, who personally lost £10,500 from the scam, now hopes the other two may also be found. The scam happened on the last day of a major retrospective of Ms Klein’s work at the gallery when a man claiming to be a restaurant owner declared an interest in the work. 

He told Ms Katz that he wanted three of them for a new Italian restaurant he was opening on Fulham Road in west London. He then said he wanted to pay the £10,500 price and used details from a credit card that later turned out to have been stolen. To make matters worse, the gallery was not insured for this type of theft.

Ms Katz decided to visit the address of the supposed restaurant in Chelsea only to discover it was a bridal wear shop – and it had been hit by the same scam. She added: “They said they had lost two expensive dresses on the same weekend, when a man fitting the description of the person who stole my paintings came in and said his sisters were getting married in Morocco and he’d been asked to get them outfits.”

Police visited the Harrow Road shop and found the painting, which has now been returned. 

Artist Ms Klein said: “I got an email from someone I had never met before who had once bought a print of my work. They liked the painting in the shop window but thought it was a strange place to see it for sale, so they sent me a picture to make sure it was a genuine piece of my work.” 

Ms Klein, who went to Hampstead School, is widely celebrated and can be found in the collections of both the British Library and the British Museum.