Moment Banksy’s iconic Girl with Balloon artwork ‘stolen in art gallery heist’

This is the moment a hooded figure shattered the glass door of a London gallery and stole Banksy’s Girl with Baloon artwork.

CCTV footage showed the individual banging on the door of Fitzrovia’s Grove Gallery for about 30 seconds before breaking inside at about 11pm Sunday.

They darted into the gallery and took the framed picture off the wall before heading out with it in their hand and walking through Tottenham Court Road.

An investigation into the missing piece was launched and later referred to the Flying Squad, a unit of the Metropolitan Police that deals with serious crimes.

Larry Fraser, 47, of Evelyn Denington Road, Beckton, and James Love, 53, of Elvin Drive, North Stifford, were charged on Wednesday with non-residential burglary.

Both appeared at Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court yesterday where they were bailed. They will appear at Kingston Crown Court on October 9.

The gallery, which police did not name but said was on central London’s New Cavendish Street, has since had the artwork returned.

Grove Gallery was about to finish its two-week exhibition featuring Banksy artworks – including the £270,000 Girl with Balloon – when the artwork was stolen.

Manager Lindor Mehmetaj learnt that Girl with Balloon had been taken on Monday.

Gallery CEO James Ryan said: ‘The swift action of the Flying Squad from the outset was incredible from start to finish, and I can’t thank them enough for every effort they have made. To say this theft was devastating and heartbreaking is an understatement.

‘The Banksy works were on display to pay homage to an incredible artist and to allow everyone to enjoy them. To witness such a brazen theft, carried out on foot, was just shocking.’

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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