Girl with Balloon is one of the street artist’s most iconic motifs (Picture: DIEGO AZUBEL/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Two men have been charged with burglary after Banksy’s Girl with Baloon artwork was stolen from a London gallery.
Larry Fraser, 47, of Evelyn Denington Road, Beckton, and James Love, 53, of Elvin Drive, North Stifford, were charged Wednesday with non-residential burglary.
They appeared at Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court yesterday. Fraser and Love were bailed to appear at Kingston Crown Court on October 9.
An investigation into the missing piece was launched at around 11pm on Sunday.
The gallery, which police did not name but said was on central London’s New Cavendish Street, has since had the artwork returned.
It’s one of the most loved artworks in Britain (Picture: CLEMENS BILAN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Girl with Baloon is a series of stencil murals by the enigmatic artist that popped up over the capital in the 2000s, with the first sprayed outside a Shoreditch shop in 2002.
They show a small child in black and out reaching out towards a red, heart-shaped balloon.
A framed Girl with Balloon, a 2006 spray paint on canvas, was at the centre of Banksy’s most spectacular pranks in 2018.
Moments after selling at auction for £1million at Sotheby’s in London, it was spontaneously but partially shredded in a stunt the artist said was a shot against the art collecting world.
The piece effectively self-destructed by, in front of gawking and gasping art collectors, slowly passing through a secret shredder hidden in the frame.
‘Going, going, gone…’ the anonymous artist wrote on his Instagram.
But the piece, renamed Love Is in the Bin, was resold at the same auction house for £18,600,000 three years later.
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