Multi-million euro painting slashed by visitor

04/09/2005 - 12:02:38
A visitor to an Austrian museum pulled a pocket knife from her purse and repeatedly slashed a painting by US artist Roy Lichtenstein worth millions of euro, police said.

The woman, a 35-year-old resident of Munich in Germany, was visiting the Kunsthaus Bregenz exhibit “Roy Lichtenstein – Classic of the New” yesterday afternoon when she vandalised the painting “Nudes in Mirror”.

She made four cuts in the painting, each measuring about 12ins, police said in a statement late yesterday.

Other museum visitors and museum guards held the woman until she could be taken to the police station.

The woman, who will be examined by a court psychiatrist, offered no explanation for her behaviour, police said.