(London) A new Banksy work that appeared in London on Thursday, the fourth in four days, was stolen just an hour after being claimed by the mysterious graffiti artist.
As usual, the famous artist from Bristol had published a photo on Instagram early this afternoon of his new creation: a wolf painted on a satellite dish fixed to a roof and which thus seems to be howling at the moon.
But an hour later, witnesses saw men grab the object in the Peckham area of the south of the capital and take it away with them.
One of them, Tom Kellow, told the PA agency that he saw “three men”. “They had a ladder. There was one man on the roof and the other two were watching the ladder.”
London police said they were called to “the theft of a satellite dish containing a work of art” shortly before 2 p.m. (9 a.m. Eastern Time).
She said she was investigating and that no arrests had been made at this stage.
This is the fourth work in four days painted by the artist in the streets of the capital, an unusual frenzy for Banksy, who usually spaces out his works by several weeks or even months.
On Monday, a goat appeared on a chimney in Richmond, west London. The next day, two elephants appeared, poking their heads out of two boarded-up windows on a facade in the upmarket Chelsea district. And on Wednesday, three monkeys appeared, seemingly swinging from a railway bridge in Shoreditch, east of the capital.
This animal theme has sparked much speculation as to its meaning, with some seeing it as a reference to the climate crisis, others to the Olympic Games or the war in Gaza.
Some have questioned a possible link with the far-right riots that have taken place in recent days in the United Kingdom, while the artist has repeatedly defended the cause of refugees.
Banksy’s works, which fetch millions of euros at auction, attract covetousness.
In December in London, a road sign on which he had painted three aircraft, apparently combat drones, was taken away by men who ran away in full view of onlookers’ cameras.