LONDON (Reuters) -A man who stole one of British street artist Banksy’s best-known paintings, “Girl with Balloon”, from a London gallery was jailed for 13 months on Friday.
Larry Fraser, 49, used a hammer to smash his way into the Grove Gallery in the Fitzrovia area of central London to steal the signed print late one night in September.
The work, which police said was valued at 270,000 pounds ($362,367), features a young girl reaching for a red heart-shaped balloon and there are several murals depicting the same image in London and elsewhere.
Despite trying to conceal his identity with a mask, Fraser was caught on camera and police tracked him down two days after the burglary. He pleaded guilty in October and was sentenced to 13 months in prison on Friday at Kingston Crown Court.
“Banksy’s ‘Girl with Balloon’ is known across the world – and we reacted immediately to not just bring Fraser to justice but also reunite the artwork with the gallery,” said Detective Chief Inspector Scott Mather.
The Grove Gallery’s manager Lindor Mehmetaj said it was remarkable that the police had managed to recover the artwork so quickly.
“It’s very hard to put into words, the weight that comes off your shoulders,” he said.
The “Girl with Balloon” first appeared on the streets of London’s Shoreditch neighbourhood in 2002, with Banksy creating versions of the painting on London’s South Bank in 2004 and at Israel’s barrier at the West Bank in 2005.
Banksy rose to fame for sharply ironic outdoor graffiti with political themes. Once a small-time graffiti artist from the English city of Bristol, his art work has become hugely popular and valuable.
($1 = 0.7451 pounds)
(Reporting by Michael Holden, Editing by William Maclean)
