A Calgary artist recently received a bit of closure years after several of her own art pieces were stolen during an elaborate heist.
On Saturday night, Michelle Kruger held a long-awaited art exhibit for nearly 200 people, showing off a half dozen paintings the public has never seen.
She called the exhibit “The Heist,” and displayed the paintings as if they were part of a crime scene.
“This situation was sort of very easy for me to express the fact that, no, this isn’t going to beat us. We’re going to rise again, and art always wins,” she said.
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Eleven of Kruger’s paintings were stolen along with dozens of other pieces in May 2018 during an art heist at the now closed Gerry Thomas Gallery just days before a planned exhibit.
All her paintings at Saturday’s exhibit still had evidence stickers on them from the police investigation as well as some of the visible damage that was sustained during the theft.
“We could fix it, but then we thought, ‘That’s part of the story.’ These are one-of-a-kind paintings, there’s no other artwork out there like that where they’ve been involved in this whole entire unbelievable story,” Kruger said.
At the time of the investigation, police estimated over half a million dollars worth of art was taken during the heist.
The man who was charged and convicted of theft returned the paintings to police, however, they were taken into possession by an insurance company to assess for an insurance claim.
Kruger would get some of her paintings back four years after the incident, finally showcasing the pieces six years later than she originally planned.
“Yeah, it’s six long years,” she said. “So it was nice to kind of have a finale on a positive note.”
Five of Kruger’s paintings are still unaccounted for, and she hopes to one day have them returned.
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