# Two Warhol prints stolen in Dutch gallery raid
Thieves blew open the door of a gallery in Oisterwijk in the southern Netherlands early on November 1 and made off with two Andy Warhol screen prints from the Reigning Queens series, leaving two more damaged in what local reporting described as a botched and amateurish heist.
The works taken were part of Warhol’s 1985 series of sixteen prints depicting four queens. The supplied evidence identifies the theft as having taken place at MPV Gallery in Oisterwijk, North Brabant, and says two additional works from the same series were damaged during the break-in. The burglary was destructive enough that the entry point itself was blown open, suggesting the thieves used force rather than a quiet removal.
The event is notable not only because Warhol remains one of the most recognizable artists of the pop-art era, but also because the targeted series is tightly associated with an iconic visual treatment of monarchy. Reigning Queens was created in 1985 and includes depictions of Queen Elizabeth II and other royal figures, making the stolen works immediately identifiable to both art historians and the public.
The supplied AP evidence does not provide a motive, suspect description or recovery status, and it does not say whether the stolen prints were insured, tracked or already being examined by police. What it does establish is the scale and nature of the damage: a deliberate forced entry, two works removed, and two more harmed in the same raid.
Because the gallery attack involved a recognizable body of work and a direct physical assault on the premises, it sits somewhere between an art theft and an act of vandalism. The theft removed objects of cultural and financial value, while the damage to the remaining prints reduced the overall integrity of the series on display or in storage.
The incident also fits a familiar pattern in art crime, where high-profile names can make relatively small-format works appealing to thieves despite the practical difficulty of selling them openly. In this case, the excerpt suggests the thieves were not especially careful, and the resulting damage may make the works harder to conceal or move.
For the gallery and the Dutch authorities, the central questions are likely to be how the burglars entered, whether the works can be recovered, and whether any surveillance or forensic evidence can identify the suspects. The evidence supplied here does not answer those questions, but it makes clear that the raid was fast, forceful and destructive.
Two prints are gone, two more are damaged, and one of Warhol’s best-known series has again become the subject of a crime story rather than an exhibition note.
