San Francisco Man Who Bought -- and Returned -- Stolen Paintings Valued at $50K Admits 'I Don't Know Shit About Art'

This and three other paintings were recovered by the Mission's Michael Rosenthal Gallery over the weekend less than 24 hours after their theft

The bizarre theft -- and rapid return -- of four paintings nicked from the Michael Rosenthal Gallery valued at $50,000 wouldn't have been possible without a recently relocated San Francisco man who claims he thought suspicious men hawking canvases out of their vans was a normal occurrence in the city -- and compared it to the Civic Center farmer's market.

Jordan Berg, 31, figured he'd hit the serendipity jackpot. The Arizonan had recently moved into a new condo in San Francisco and was looking for some art to class up the place -- and here was a guy offering him some art, right on the street.

Berg described the seller as "ethnic" -- perhaps Italian, perhaps Arabic -- in his mid-40s, with some kind of thick accent, and standing around 5-foot-8. After the man offered to sell paintings to Berg Friday afternoon at Fifth and Market, the two walked back to the seller's large, white van; in retrospect Berg thinks other men may have been prowling nearby, looking for other would-be buyers.

When asked if this seemed, you know, suspicious, Berg replied, "I'm new to the city so, I know a lot of stuff is being bought on the street. There's a farmer's market at [Civic Center]. I'm not an art connoisseur, I don't know shit about art. It looked like the kind of art who spray-paint and create funky designs. There was some stuff I liked."

In actuality, the art was crafted by Pacifica painter Terry Hoff, and had been swiped from the Michael Rosenthal Gallery in the wee hours Friday morning after someone pried the door off its hinges, bypassed valuable cameras and electronics, and made off with four canvases.

The "ethnic" man wanted a couple grand, but Berg talked him down to $1,000. The paintings were delivered to Berg's brand new condo that afternoon; Berg did not let the men into his apartment -- which, in retrospect, was probably a good idea -- and paid them in cash in the
hallway.  

Berg -- who works in "business development for a national property tax consulting company" -- figured he'd wait until his roommate came home before deciding where to hang the new paintings. But they would never grace his walls. He saw the canvases on a TV news report describing the theft, placed a call to the gallery, and then dialed the police. An SFPD "paddy wagon" pulled up to his condo, and the paintings were loaded in. By 2 a.m. on Saturday morning, they were back in Rosenthal's  hands.

The gallery owner said the theft and rapid recovery of the paintings was "on the high end of bizarre. I was down in L.A. over the weekend and I told some artist friends about this and
no one had every heard of anything like it."

Specifically, Rosenthal has no idea why the thieves bypassed valuable equipment to filch the paintings -- and why they chose the four paintings they did and stopped there. The quartet of stolen canvases were not the four most valuable nor the easiest to pry off the wall and were located in various corners of the gallery. In short, he's completely stumped. He's less stumped about Berg's motivations, but said he didn't ask the younger man what he was thinking because "I didn't want to put him on the spot."

Berg, meanwhile, claims he never thought the paintings could have been stolen until he saw them on television. And while Rosenthal says he and Hoff have agreed to give Berg a small
Hoff painting -- worth about what Berg paid for the other canvases -- Berg said this development is news to him. Not that he claims to care.

"You know what? I'm just happy the artist has his artwork back after all the time he spent on it."