Car examined over Zurich art robbery

Swiss police are examining a car that may contain paintings taken in an art heist last week.

The car is in Zurich University's psychiatric clinic, a few hundred metres from the private Buehrle Collection, where oil paintings worth €163 million by Cezanne, Degas, van Gogh and Monet were stolen on February 10th.

The gallery had offered a €62,000 reward for the recovery of four paintings worth €113 million stolen by masked gunmen.

The four oil paintings were snatched on a Sunday afternoon in a three-minute raid. Three men wearing ski masks and dark clothes burst into the museum shortly before 4.30pm, waving pistols.

One man ordered visitors and employees on to the ground while the other two headed into a ground-floor hall. They removed four works from the walls and escaped in a white car.

The four paintings stolen were: Monet's Poppies Near Vetheuil (1880); Cézanne's Boy in the Red Vest (1890); Degas's Viscount Lepic and his Daughters (1871); and Van Gogh's Blossoming Chestnut Branches (1890).

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