A stolen Pablo Picasso etching has been returned to a Milwaukee art dealer eight years after its theft, the Associated Press reported.
The artwork is one of 30 known Torero prints by Pablo Picasso dated to 1949, and belonged to Bill DeLind of DeLind Fine Art Appraisals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the time of its theft in 2018, it was valued between $35,000 and $50,000. Today, it likely meets the high estimate, according to the report.
Swiped from the DeLind Fine Art Appraisals under mysterious circumstance, the artwork resurfaced thanks to Milwaukee landlord Tim Dertz. He found the print hanging in the apartment of an evicted tenant, with “tons of dust across the top of it”, he told local television station WISN.
An antique dealer friends with Dertz later identified it as a missing Picasso that had been stolen from DeLind’s gallery in 2018; a DeLind Fine Art Appraisals sticker was still attached to the back of the frame. It was turned into the police who contacted DeLind.
“On August 5, 2026, a community member walked into Milwaukee Police District Four and turned in an etching print that was suspected to have been stolen from an art gallery back on February 16, 2018,” Milwaukee police detailed in a release.
The statement added that “the etching print was an original Pablo Picasso — Torero, 1949,” and that investigators are in the process of locating its rightful owner.
“When it disappeared, it was such a sort of a personal insult. This just made me feel so bad,” DeLind told Euro News. “So it was just the opposite when it came back. It’s like, there are good people in the world.”
DeLind said that his former business partner, who passed away in February, had been devastated by the theft. He had contacted the police every year since the anniversary of the crime, requesting they publicize the case in an effort to raise awareness and, ultimately, recover the artwork.
“He would be over the moon about this,” DeLind said. “It was special to him.”
In their release, the police concluded, “The Milwaukee Police Department is grateful that this community member recognized the etching print and did the right thing and returned it. We are better together.”
The Picasso print remains in police possession while the art gallery and the client who commissioned it for sale work with the insurance company.
