Picasso Work Stolen From Miami Exhibit

Picasso didn't just create paintings, he made silver plates as well. And a thief has made off with one worth about $85,000 from a Miami art festival, reports Reuters. Someone plucked Visage aux Mains (Face with Hands) from a wall at Art Miami—it was there when a guard checked at 10:30pm Thursday but gone when owner David Smith of the Leslie Smith Gallery checked at 10:30am yesterday, reports the Miami Herald. No surveillance video exists, and because the plate is about 16 inches wide, someone could have stuck it inside a coat and walked away.

Smith tells the Miami newspaper that a smaller and far more expensive Picasso ceramic ($365,000) was hanging just below the stolen plate, so either the thief didn't know or figured that one would be harder to sell on the black market. As the stolen plate's name implies, it features a smiling face in the center, and stick-figure hands on the sides. Picasso made it in 1956 as part of a 20-plate series. (More Pablo Picasso stories.)