Photo: Filippoe Monteforte Agence France-Presse
The “door of Banksy” was exhibited at the embassy of France in Italy after having been returned.
It represents a young girl to look sad : the work attributed to Banksy, a tribute to the victims of the attacks of November 2015 in Paris, fly in 2019 and recently found in a farm not far from Rome, was officially returned by Italy to France on Tuesday.
The “door of Banksy” was on display at the palazzo Farnese in Rome, which houses the embassy of France in Italy, in the presence of ambassador Christian Masset, the chief prosecutor of l’aquila, chief town of the Abruzzo region, where it was found at the beginning of June, and of the general of the carabinieri responsible for the defence of the cultural heritage.
The date and the conditions of his return to France has not been disclosed. According to the Italian agency Agi, it might find a jewel in the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, information which has not been confirmed by the un agency.
The work, attributed to street artist british Banksy had been painted current 2018 on one of the emergency exits located behind the Bataclan, in the passage where many spectators of the concert of Eagles of Death Metal had escaped during the terrorist attack.
Made with stencil and white paint, the piece depicts a young girl to look sad, as a tribute on the same place where 90 people have been killed in the 13 November 2015, in a series of jihadist attacks that hit the French capital and its suburbs.
The robbers, in balaclavas, were captured by cutting the door to the grinder on the night of 25 to 26 January 2019. The scene had been filmed by cctv cameras.
Six people were arrested at the end of June in France during a large-scale operation led by the judicial police of Paris, in the Alps and in central regions. Two of them have been charged with robbery in an organized and the other four of handling stolen goods theft organised.
According to Agi, two of the suspects are Italians born in France and eight people in total were arrested, while a presumed accomplice is on the run.
This door is a witness emotional for us, in France, “said the ambassador during the ceremony, stressing” the quality of the cooperation Italian-French.” “It has a double value, because it reminds us of the 90 victims” of the attack against the Bataclan “and she has been witness to the massacre,” said Mr. Masset.
[This gate] is a witness emotional for us, in France
— Christian Masset
An artist at the heart of the debate
Banksy, who likes to keep his identity secret, had struck a major blow in June 2018 by disseminating a series of stencils, the tone sometimes very political, in the French capital.
He had claimed the paternity of the eight works on his account Instagram, whose silhouette sad on the front of the Bataclan, a diversion of the painting Napoleon crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David and a girl drawing a pattern tapestry rose on a swastika near the former “centre of first reception” of the refugees in Paris. And also a little rat on the nose masked, waving a pencil (or knife precision), near the Pompidou Centre.
This last work, performed on the backside of the panel input of a parking lot, was also stolen at the beginning of September 2019. The Centre Pompidou, which houses important collections of contemporary art, had filed a complaint ” for theft and damage “.
Banksy, who likes to play with the media as the art market, is today one of the top contemporary artists in the world.
In cities such as Paris, London and New York, his works offer a spotlight on issues at the heart of debates in society, such as the issue of refugees. If in Paris of the elected officials welcomed his “invasion” artistic, inevitably arises the problem of their possible theft or damage.
In October 2018, the purchaser of a reproduction of one of the most famous images of Banksy, Girl with Balloon, which fetched nearly 1.185 million euros (1,84 million canadian dollars) at Sotheby’s, London, had been surprised when the canvas self-destruct partially thanks to an ingenious mechanism hidden in its frame, cutting off part of the image in thin strips vertical.
In recent weeks, the artist has reproduced on his account Instagram a drawing showing, next to the portrait of a black man, a lighted candle setting fire to the american flag, in tribute to George Floyd.
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