> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://hyperallergic.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Stolen Matisse Returned to Venezuela
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/stolen-matisse-returned-to-venezuela/
- Published: 2014-07-08T22:05:12.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:16:50.000Z
- Description: A Matisse painting valued at $3 million was returned to Venezuela yesterday, after disappearing from an art museum there at least a decade prior, Reuters reported.
- Author: Jillian Steinhauer
- Tags: In Brief, Art Crime, Henri Matisse, Venezuela, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:03 (2014, 2015, part 1)

![Left: Henri Matisse, "Odalisque in Red Pants"; right: the fake version of the work that thieves hng at Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas (image via artdaily.com)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2014/07/venezuela-matisse2.jpg)

Left: Henri Matisse, “Odalisque in Red Pants” (1925); right: the fake version of the work that thieves substituted at Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas (image via artdaily.com)

A Matisse painting valued at $3 million was returned to Venezuela yesterday, after disappearing from an art museum there at least a decade prior, Reuters [reported](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/08/us-venezuela-art-idUSKBN0FD00720140708?ref=hyperallergic.com). “Odalisque in Red Pants” (1925) was stolen from the Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas sometime [between 1999 and 2000](http://artdaily.com/news/71312/Recovered-Matisse--Odalisque-in-Red-Pants--returned-to-Venezuelan-authorities?ref=hyperallergic.com#.U7xTJI1dWH-), but its disappearance wasn’t discovered until 2002 because the thieves replaced it with a “[crudely executed](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/08/world/americas/venezuela-stolen-matisse-painting-returned.html?ref=arts&%5Fr=0)” fake. The FBI recovered the painting in Miami Beach in 2012, after a man named Pedro Marcuello Guzman offered to sell it to undercover agents for $740,000\. Guzman was sentenced to 33 months in prison; his accomplice, Maria Martha Elisa Ornelas Lazo, was sentenced to 21 months.

![Venezuelan authorities showing off the returned Matisse on Monday (screenshot via YouTube)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2014/07/venezuela-matisse.jpg)

Venezuelan authorities showing off the returned Matisse on Monday (screenshot via YouTube)

The work apparently remains in “[extraordinary condition](http://artdaily.com/news/71312/Recovered-Matisse--Odalisque-in-Red-Pants--returned-to-Venezuelan-authorities?ref=hyperallergic.com#.U7xTJI1dWH-)” and was brought home to great enthusiasm in Venezuela. “This is another achievement of the Bolivarian revolution, of a government in touch with the arts,” Culture Minister Fidel Barbarito told TV reporters at Caracas airport, where the painting was briefly shown off upon arrival.