A painting by one of Brazil’s most celebrated artists – the pioneering modernist Tarsila do Amaral – has been found stashed under the bed of an alleged trickster who was part of a multimillion pound art heist built around the bogus predictions of a phoney clairvoyant.
The artwork, worth an estimated 300m reais (£48m), was reportedly found in Rio on Wednesday morning during a police operation targeting a gang of con artists who had preyed on the elderly widow of an art dealer and collector.
