A Banksy mural at the Bataclan theater in Paris was stolen by three masked men wearing gloves who used an electric saw and crowbar to remove the door the artwork was painted on, the theater’s director said.
The art piece, which honored the victims of the November 2015 terrorist attack on the theater, depicted a veiled female figure looking at the ground in a mournful pose, NBC News reported. It was first spotted in June 2018 and was visible on the building’s fire door three years after terrorists stormed the venue during an Eagles of Death Metal concert. That 2015 rampage was part of coordinated attacks in and around the French capital that left more than 120 people dead.
Ninety of those victims died at the Bataclan when the ISIS-supporting gunmen opened fire.
“The painting was even protected by a Plexiglass. The whole door disappeared,” Florence Jeux, director of the Bataclan, told NBC News. “The security alarms went off and our security agency immediately alerted us.”
Jeux said that a security camera caught the thieves cutting the door, loading it in a truck and driving off. The footage was handed over to police as part of the investigation.
“Artist Banksy offered this work of art on the Bataclan emergency exit door for a reason,” the theater wrote in a translated Facebook message, saying the mural was a “momentum of tribute and support.”
“The very essence of urban art is to give life to a work of art in a particular environment,” the note continued, “and we are convinced that this work only made sense in that place, that is why we wished to leave it, free, on the street, accessible to all.”
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
