VANCOUVER — A heavy bronze sculpture worth about $24,000 that went missing earlier this month has been found across town.
“After Marino Marini” is a 150-kilogram statue created by artist Fahri Aldin and owned by the Petley Jones Gallery in South Granville before it went missing Nov. 4. The sculpture depicts a figure sitting on a horse.
On Wednesday, a Vancouver Reddit photo post shared around 2 p.m. showed the sculpture sitting on the cobblestone sidewalk outside a Megabite pizza in Gastown, next to the entrance of a single-room-occupancy building.
“I can give you a phenomenal update,” said gallery manager Vesna Zaric when contacted by Postmedia News on Wednesday afternoon. “The picture apparently came out about an hour ago, right at the time the police had recovered the sculpture from the SRO, which has an entrance right next to the pizza place.”
Zaric said the sculpture was in police possession and would be delivered back to the gallery, about 3.4 kilometres away from where the sculpture was found, later this week.
“We’ve felt very grateful that the news wanted to pick up the story and help … spread the word that it’s missing,” said Zaric. “We’ve had a great deal of people supporting us and looking for it and paying attention all-around.”
Sgt. Aaron Roed of the Vancouver police said no suspects were in custody as of Wednesday but that the investigation is continuing and cops expect to recommend charges at a later time.
In interviews last week, Zaric said surveillance video from the morning of Nov. 4 showed a man dragging the sculpture down seven or eight steps from its perch by the gallery’s front entrance, before loading it into a cart and wheeling it away.
The gallery had offered a reward in the hopes that someone would recognize the sculpture before it was taken to a metal-salvage business.
— With files from The Canadian Press
