A stolen Pablo Picasso painting worth $15 million that was seized by immigration officials last year has been returned to France, CNN reports.
The painting, titled La Coiffeusse, which translates to The Hairdresser, was stolen from the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 1998. The work was recovered by officials whose alarm bells went off after a package that was labeled as a $33 Christmas gift was set to make its way to a climate controlled storage facility in New York from Belgium. The French writing on the package was also suspicious to authorities.
The U.S held a ceremony at the French Embassy in Washington to make the return of the painting official. "Picasso used to say, 'A painting truly exists in the eyes of the beholder,'" Frederic Dore, the French Embassy's deputy chief of mission said, according to CNN. "Returning to the Musee National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, La Coiffeuse will come back to life and be seen again by the public."
This is already the second piece of news involving stolen Picassos this month. The painting Head of a Young Woman, valued at $27 million, was seized by French customs from a Spaniard billionaire's yacht.
