The Balearic Prosecutor’s Office has filed the complaint filed by the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) for the disappearance of three works by Xavier Mariscal, José María Sicilia and José Manuel Broto that were property of the university center. A painting by Miquel Barceló that had also disappeared was finally located when it tried to be sold at auction.
The UIB reports that the Prosecutor’s Office has not been able to determine the location of these three works, which were transferred in 1988 and were part of an exhibition in 1989. It points out that, due to the absence of a record of the movement of the works, the investigation He has not been able to determine what became of them. The UIB points out in a statement that, in addition to the fact that there is no indication of where they may be, the possible criminal responsibility for the crime has already expired. For this reason, the Prosecutor’s Office has decided to archive the proceedings.
The UIB filed the complaint in April 2023, after legal services determined that four paintings were missing from its artistic collection that had been transferred to the center by their authors. A fourth painting, the work of the Mallorcan painter Miquel Barceló, could be recovered after it was removed from an auction house at the request of the center. The owner had acquired it in an art gallery in Palma that no longer exists and its owner has already died.
The works correspond to a loan from the artists to the UIB within the framework of a campaign promoted in Mallorca for the preservation of one of the natural spaces of the islands, Sa Canova, in Artà. In 1988, the Grup d’Ornitologia Balear (GOB), the main environmental entity in Mallorca, launched a campaign to prevent the construction of an urban complex in this virgin enclave of Mallorca.
The painter Miquel Barceló encouraged several artists to donate an original work with the aim of making posters and obtaining funds to finance the GOB campaign. Antoni Tàpies, Miguel Ángel Campano, José María Sicilia, José Manuel Broto and Xavier Mariscal joined the initiative, as well as Barceló himself. The original works were later transferred by their authors to the UIB.
After 35 years of that donation, the UIB artistic fund is only aware that the works by Tàpies and Campano are still in its possession and did not discover the absence of the rest of the paintings until it learned of the auction of Miquel’s painting Barceló, which was supposed to be in the artistic inventory of the UIB.
As a consequence, the vice-rector for Cultural Projection of the UIB contacted the artists, who confirmed that the ownership of the works corresponded to the teaching center. They signed a document in which they recognized the donation as part of the environmental campaign, which allowed the UIB to file a complaint about the disappearance of the works, which has now been archived.
The owner of the Barceló painting agreed to give up the work and return it to the university center without financial compensation. The UIB regrets that the rest of the paintings could not be recovered and points out that all these works represent an important heritage linked to the history of Mallorca.
