Paal Enger, a emerging chance for a celebrated Norwegian football membership who traded a sport that he beloved for any other — artwork robbery — that he completely relished, culminating in his notorious 1994 heist of Edvard Munch’s masterpiece “The Scream,” died on June 29 in Oslo. He used to be 57.
His demise used to be showed by means of Nils Christian Nordhus, an Oslo-based attorney who previously represented Mr. Enger. He didn’t serve any longer main points.
Mr. Enger, who used to be born in Oslo on March 26, 1967, rose from the yongster device of Vaalerenga, a five-time champion of Norway’s top-level league, now referred to as Eliteserien, and in 1985 made his debut with the membership.
As a adolescence, he used to be keen on the Argentine football superstar Diego Maradona. However his actual hero, in line with a 2021 profile in The Athletic, used to be Don Vito Corleone, the fictitious crime boss performed by means of Marlon Brando in “The Godfather.” He used to be so immersed in Mafia lore that after he used to be 15, he flew to Fresh York to peer for himself the places the place the Academy Award-winning “Godfather” motion pictures have been shot.
Through next, he used to be disagree stranger to the arena of presen outdoor the regulation. “I grew up in Tveita, on the east side of Oslo, and people there don’t have much money,” he stated in an interview utmost hour with the British tabloid The Solar. “We started doing crime when we were very young and I found it exciting. I carried on because I enjoyed it very much.”
Graduating from boosting sweet to cracking safes and blowing up automatic teller machines with community pals, he proved a phenom in each athletics and crime.
His outlaw adjust arrogance used to be disagree confidential to his teammates, who spotted that he threw away his tracksuits upcoming each and every apply in lieu than wash them, and that he incessantly confirmed up in luxurious automobiles that have been a ways past an adolescent’s price range. “I remember once he popped up with a BMW 735i,” one former teammate instructed The Athletic. “He liked to steal expensive cars, there’s no doubt about it.”
Regardless of his style for larceny, maximum at the squad thought to be him a fashion teammate, at the same time as his interests past the regulation had him dwelling like a celebrity. “I did so much crime in my 20s,” he instructed The Solar, “that I had everything — cars, boats, money, the most beautiful women in Oslo. But I wanted more.”
In particular, he sought after one in every of his family’s crown jewels. “The Scream,” which has been known as Norway’s “Mona Lisa,” is among the maximum recognizable — and reproduced — art work on the planet.
Munch, identified for haunting Expressionist art work that explored topics like sexuality and insanity, if truth be told made four versions of “The Scream,” two rendered in paint and two in pastel and crayon. The one one in personal palms, an 1895 pastel, bought at public sale in 2012 for nearly $120 million to the financier Leon Unlit.
Wearing emotional scars from his adolescence with a violent stepfather, Mr. Enger discovered a kindred spirit within the agonized howling of the portray’s ghostly matter, an tonality of private anguish in addition to a broader existential dread.
“My obsession with this picture started the first time I saw it,” Mr. Enger stated in “The Man Who Stole ‘The Scream,’” a documentary exempted utmost hour. “As soon as I got close to the picture I got an extraordinary feeling. Of anxiety. Strange things in my head. I had such an intense connection with ‘The Scream’ right away. And it’s never left me.”
Having grown acquainted with simply taking anything else he desired, he made up our minds that the well-known portray will have to be disagree exception.
In 1988, Mr. Enger, accompanied by means of his pal and longtime spouse in crime Bjorn Grytdal, slipped thru a window on the Munch Museum in Oslo to scouse borrow a model of “The Scream.” However a hitch of their plan led them in lieu to grab any other Munch masterwork, “Love and Pain,” often referred to as “Vampire.”
“The disappointment lasted days,” Mr. Enger after recalled, “but then it started to become fun.” Partly, that used to be as a result of he stored the portray undisclosed within the ceiling of a lake corridor he owned that used to be frequented by means of off-duty law enforcement officials.
“They don’t know it’s hanging just one meter from them,” he added. “That was the best feeling. We let them play for free just to have them there.”
The peace ended when his companion let guarantee slip to a neighbor who used to be a police informant. Mr. Enger spent 4 years in jail for the robbery, successfully finishing any hope of football glory.
Even so, his ambition burned. He grew to become his attractions again to his muse and quarry.
On Feb. 12, 1994, Norway’s consideration — together with really extensive regulation enforcement assets — used to be targeted at the opening ceremony of the Iciness Olympics in Lillehammer.
Mr. Enger took benefit of the distraction. He and an companion clambered up a ladder outdoor the Nationwide Gallery in Oslo, smashed a window and slipped in — and inside 50 seconds, The Athletic reported, slipped out with the museum’s model of “The Scream,” which on the hour used to be valued at about $55 million.
The thieves left in the back of the ladder, their cord cutters and a notice: “A thousand thanks for your poor security.”
Given his historical past, Mr. Enger used to be an perceivable suspect. Nonetheless, he knew that the police had not anything on him, so he started taunting them, calling with fake leads.
“I don’t think I really understood completely how much it meant for the National Gallery, the police and everyone,” he after stated. “I made a fool of them on national TV.”
The stymied government sooner or later reached out to Scotland Backyard, which dispatched Charles Hill, a detective from its artwork and antiques unit, to Norway. Mr. Hill, posing as a consultant of the J. Paul Getty Museum in California, expressed pastime in purchasing “The Scream” from an artwork broker who used to be attached to Mr. Enger.
Regardless of misgivings over the extremely not going situation {that a} prestigious museum would shell out for a stolen masterpiece, Mr. Enger dispatched Mr. Grytdal, one in every of his accomplices within the robbery, to pursue a trade in.
“I felt, ‘Maybe I have had it long enough,” Mr. Enger later recalled. “Maybe just drop all those dreams I had of the game to come. I was totally sure the police had almost no evidence against me, so the only one they could arrest was Bjorn.”
That too proved a highly unlikely scenario. Three months after the theft, the police arrested Mr. Enger, Mr. Grytdal and two other accomplices.
Mr. Enger once said that he had “four children with four different mothers from four countries.” Information on survivors was not immediately available.
In 1996, Mr. Enger was sentenced to six years and three months in prison, where he took up painting, taking stylistic inspiration from his artistic hero.
After his release, he established an art career of his own. In 2011, his abstract paintings were exhibited at a gallery in Norway.
Still, he did not go clean. In 2015, he was charged with stealing 17 paintings from an Oslo gallery.
This is not to say that he was wholly averse to acquiring art by legitimate means. In 2001, he bought an unsigned Munch lithograph at auction for about $3,000.
Leaving the auction house that day, he ran into the former head of security for the National Gallery. “Congratulations,” he told Mr. Enger. “It’s splendid that you simply’ve if truth be told purchased a Munch — a lot better than stealing one.”
