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London (dpa) - A two-metre bronze sculpture worth 600,000 pounds (one million dollars) by major British post-war artist Lynn Chadwick has been stolen from the grounds of a university in southwest London, police said Tuesday.
Detectives said it would have taken at least eight people to move the artwork, entitled "The Watchers", from the gardens of Roehampton University, near Richmond.
The sculpture, one of a set of three statues, was taken overnight on January 10, police said.
The theft comes just five weeks after a massive Henry Moore bronze sculpture, worth 3 million pounds, was taken from the grounds of the Henry Moore Foundation in Perry Green, near London.
The theft of the "Reclining Figure", weighing two tons, was recorded on CCTV cameras installed in the park surrounding the foundation set up in memory of Moore, Britain's most famous sculptor.
It showed three men using a crane to load the massive piece onto a lorry on December 15.
London Metropolitan Police said there had been around 20 similar thefts of artworks in and around the capital in the last six months.
Chadwick, who was born in London in 1914, studied drawing, watercolour and oil painting before working as an architectural draughtsman in London from 1933 to 1939.
He came to sculpture relatively late, holding his first exhibition in London in 1950, but his reputation grew rapidly.
Chadwick won the International Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1956 and was honoured by Queen Elizabeth II in 1964. He died in April, 2003.
Copyright 2006 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
