A fter having escaped a psychiatric clinic in Utrecht, the same man believed to be responsible for an acid attack on Rembrandt's The Night Watch travelled by train to Amsterdam where he took to Picasso's Femme nue devant le jardin (Woman Nude Before A Garden) with a blunt knife.

The man spent about an hour in the gallery and waited till a guard had left the room till he struck. The magnitude of the attack was quite severe, in part due to the bluntness of the knife which was used to rip a large circular hole out of the center.

The man, a 41 year old psychiatric patient identified only as "Paul G" had been held in a clinic since 1978 after he was overpwered by the passengers and crew of a Madrid bound KLM flight that he attempted to hijack with a toy gun.

Although at the time of attack there were reportedly 2,500 visitors in the gallery, Paul G managed to flee to the De Telegraaf newspaper office where he was arrested in the lobby after he claimed responsibility and staff called the police.

It was the fourth such attack that the Stedelijik Museum had endured, giving rise to debate on the idea of banning of suspect visitors to Museums. In 1997 a man spray painted on Kazimir Malevich's Suprematisme 1920-1927 and in 1986 and 1997 a serial Barnett Newman attacker gave damage to Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III and Cathedra respectively.

Commenting on the topic of security in relation to the Picasso attack, Rudi Fuchs director of the Stedelijk delivered the widely quoted statement 'You can come in. You can look. And unfortunately, you can also whip out a knife and cut,'[1]

 

1.Picasso painting slashed by Dutch psychiatric patient
New York Times, 5/17/1999

 

Vulnerability of art underscored by Picasso damage in Amsterdam
WILLIAM J. KOLE, ASSOCIATED PRESS AMSTERDAM, Netherlands

Amsterdam's Picasso knifeman could be serial vandal
Emma Muller AMSTERDAM, May 17 (Reuters)