DARWIN Seven historic Aboriginal paintings stolen from an Australian museum were recovered hours later after the thief apparently dumped them in a park, police said. The paintings, valued at more than £230,000 by the Northern Territory Museum and Art Gallery in Darwin, were undamaged.

The thief broke into the museum before dawn and took the paintings from the Papunya Tula movement, a 1970s artists’ collective in central Australia credited with creating a modern Aboriginal style that is world renowned, and a seventh of an Australian landscape.

Police said that a blood-spattered broken window and security footage indicated that the culprit smashed it with a rock and spent 15 minutes inside while alarms rang. About seven hours later detectives found the paintings in parkland near the Darwin bowls and social club. A 37-year-old man has been charged and will appear in court today. Police believe that alcohol was involved.

Anna Malgorzewicz, the gallery’s director, said that the Papunya movement was important historically. It was the first to have rendered tribal art, traditionally painted on bodies or scratched into sandon board or canvas (Agencies)

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