ST. LOUIS - Twenty-one more paintings and other works by artists including Picasso, Matisse and Kandinsky, stolen from the collection of a Florida couple in 2002, have been recovered, federal authorities said Thursday.

Officials said the works were discovered recently but did not say where they were found. The items were part of a more than 130-piece collection valued at $4 million belonging to David and Diane Harter that had been in storage at a facility in suburban Bridgeton.

Two men who had worked there, Biron A. Valier and Donald R. Rasch, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court here last year to a felony scheme of transporting stolen artwork. Raasch was sentenced to two years in prison, Valier to 90 days followed by six months of house arrest.

The men also were made jointly liable to pay restitution of $1.2 million - the estimated value of the art work still missing at the time. The newly recovered pieces from the Harter collection are valued at about $600,000.

The Harters kept their art works as an investment and had them stored in Missouri for nearly a decade while they moved from Nebraska to Arizona and then to Florida.

The newly recovered pieces from their collection are valued at about $600,000. The FBI also said it had found 12 other works believed to have been stolen, including a piece by the abstract expressionist Robert Motherwell, and agents were attempting to find the owners.

Some of the 12 pieces, including one purportedly by Amedeo Modigliani, might be forgeries or reproductions, said Frank Brostrom, an agent with the FBI's art crime task force.

FBI records show the pieces were recovered between Jan. 29 and Feb. 16. Roland Corvington, agent in charge of the St. Louis FBI office, said he could not discuss where the art works were found.

"The case did not stop with the sentencing of Valier and Rasch," he said.

"We had great cooperation from people in the art field," said U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway.

Both Valier and Rasch agreed to cooperate with the FBI, and claimed to have returned all of the art they stole.

William Margulis, an attorney for Valier, said Thursday that his client had turned over all the art he took and that none of the works recovered recently was connected to Valier or his family or associates.

Information from: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, STLtoday.com

Back 24.02.2006.