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Two towering sculptures, made up of thousands of pounds of bronze and stainless steel, completed artist and filmmaker Sir Daniel Wynn for over a year.
They disappeared over the weekend.
Police believe that on June 14 or 15 at least one burglar departed from Anaheim Hills warehouses, “Icarus insin” and “Quantum Mechanics: Homme” (sculptures valued at a total of $2.1 million). Other artwork and valuables in the warehouse were untouched that would have been easy to move around. Authorities have few details about the robbery.
“Unfortunately, we have little information, but we are currently investigating,” said Anaheim Police Sergeant. Matt Sutter said.
The life-size “Quantum Mechanics: Homme” artwork, composed of lugaite, bronze and stainless steel, depicts a man with winged horns, and was featured in the 2022 award-winning short film, “Creating.”
The second Winn work, “Icarus in the Insin,” based in part on the chaotic childhood escape of a sculptor from Vietnam, is a steel and bronze sculpture that is eight feet tall, weighs a tonne, and costs $350,000.
Both sculptures are kept in a temporary facility and were last seen Saturday by warehouse workers in Anaheim Hills.
Police said both works were missing when workers returned to the facility Monday.
Wynn believes that while art recovery experts suspect that the two sculptures will be destroyed due to scrap metal, the fragments may have been stolen by a crude collector.
“Usually, these sculptures move about 12 men and two forklifts when they are doing displays and take flatbeds or trucks to carry them,” Wynn said. “This is not an easy task.”
Wynn told the Times that the last few days have been stressful and his anxiety is “through the roof.” Winn is considered a blue chip artist. This means that his work is highly sought after and has high monetary value.
A former UC Irvine medical student who was once homeless after switching his major from medicine to art, said he fused art, quantum metaphysics and philosophy with his work.
The Vietnamese refugee owns Winslavin Fine Art Gallery on Rodeo Drive and was appointed as the art committee member at John Wayne Airport earlier this month.
His art loss, he said, pushed Wynn “in the dark place,” but he found a catharsis talking about the situation.
“These are my children,” he said of each individual piece. “I don’t have any physical, organic kids. All the artwork I create is my kids.”
Of the two sculptures, the majority of “Homme” was the seventh unsold job seeking to explore philosophical concepts, universal truths, and answer enduring questions.
In Icarus, a small focus on the struggle of Wynn, a nine-year-old who will emigrate to the United States on the last day of the Vietnam War. The sculpture was tied to Wynn’s film “Chrysalis” based on his memoirs.
Wynn said the level of refinement of theft has led him to suspect that he was targeted and that his work was on the black market.
He recently turned over a list of individuals who asked police about his sculptures, he said.
Anaheim Police Sergeant Sutter said this was the biggest robbery he has seen in the department in 25 years.
“We had a share of a robbed high-end home, but this type of crime, including forklifts, trucks, crews and sculpture sizes, is something we don’t remember what we had before,” Sutter said.
Sutter said investigators are seeking footage from businesses near the warehouse that would help identify the suspect.
“I don’t know where these sculptures are,” Sutter said. “They might be in someone’s house or somewhere in a shipping container, and that’s what we’re trying to find.”
Chris Marinello, founder of the Dispute Resolution and Arts Recovery Service, named Art Recovery International, said the sculpture is likely to be discarded for metal.
Marinello said the scrapyard tears such pieces into thousands of small pieces, covering the metal origin.
“Unfortunately, criminals aren’t that bright and don’t look at the artwork, but instead they’re millions of worthy sculptures that are more valuable to raw metals like steel and bronze,” Marinello said.
Marinero pointed to a two-ton Henry Moore bronze sculpture known as a reclining figure, stolen from the Artist’s Foundation in Hertfordshire, England in 2005.
The piece was rated at £3 million, but authorities believe it was discarded for just £1,500.
“Sculptures of this size cannot be sold in the market,” Marinello said of Wynn’s stolen work.
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