MINNEAPOLIS — Minneapolis painter Leon Hushcha’ and his assistant Carley Novak opened their North Loop gallery and studio in the morning to discover they’d been robbed. Missing were 18 paintings and about 50 prints. The thieves, police said, knew what they were doing. They entered the studio through a fire escape door, probably with a key, and turned around security cameras. One camera, however, caught the thieves — two men — rolling a cart laden with art across a parking lot. This was between 6:45 and 7:15 a.m. Hushka said the loss at $80,000.
Caught in act. After dawn but before gallery opened.
Pushka. Minneapolis painter of Ukranian lineage. Recent exhibit: “Year of the Horse.”
Hushcha profile
Hushcha, now 80, was born in a displaced persons camp in Austria after his parents fled Ukraine following World War II. They immigrated to the United States and Hushcha grew up in Minneapolis. He studied at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the University of Minnesota. Only a week ago he had opened the exhibition “The Year of the Horse” at his studio. The exhibition depicted horses and women, celebrating the Chinese Year of the Horse.
Minneapolis art heists
Art heists are unusual in Minneapolis. In 2000 a $30,000 watercolor by French impressionist painter Marie Laurencin disappeared from the long-running Doug Flanders gallery. Police found the painting weeks later inide a false ceiling a downtown men’s toilet.