Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo`s sprawling `America` fetched 6.8 million dollars, just under pre-auction estimate, at Sotheby`s Latin American art auction that showed the effects of the ongoing financial crisis.

Britain has returned to Greece a 14th-century icon stolen from a Greek Orthodox monastery 30 years ago and found in the hands of a London-based collector, the Greek culture minstry said on Wednesday.

The religious painting of Christ`s Deposition from the Cross had been stolen from the monastery of St John the Baptist in Serres, northern Greece in 1978.

Belgian pop artist Guy Peellaert, whose work includes album covers for the Rolling Stones and David Bowie and posters for films such as `Taxi Driver,` has died, his agent said Wednesday.

Peellaert died Monday in Paris aged 74 after a long illness, Noemie Mainguet said.

Belgian pop artist Guy Peellaert, whose work includes album covers for the Rolling Stones and David Bowie and posters for films such as `Taxi Driver,` has died, his agent said Wednesday.

Peellaert died Monday in Paris aged 74 after a long illness, Noemie Mainguet said.

LONDON, Nov 17, 2007 (AFP) - An octagenarian couple and their son have been brought to justice in Britain for making a small fortune out of faking artworks that fooled experts for 17 years, newspapers said Saturday.

George Greenhalgh, 84, his wife Olive, 83, and their 47-year-old son Shaun produced counterfeits of works dating back to ancient Rome and Egypt, operating out of a small house in Bolton, north-west England.

LOS ANGELES, Oct 19, 2007 (AFP) - A Los Angeles judge has turned down a legal bid to recover two prized paintings from the Norton Simon Museum of Art that were seized by the Nazis during World War II, US reports said Friday.

Judge John Walker did not reveal his reasons for the decision, which relates to two life-size paintings of Adam and Eve by the German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder dating from the 16th century.

SAN JOSE, Oct 18, 2007 (AFP) - A daughter of Diego Rivera criticized the Mexican art legend's famous third wife, Frida Kahlo, as a subpar painter whose work became pricey thanks to pop star Madonna's interest in it.

In a Costa Rican newspaper interview, Guadalupe Rivera, a Mexican writer and art historian, criticized Kahlo's penchant for self-portraits.

'During her life, she painted some 50 paintings, and the theme was her own image,' Rivera told La Nacion newspaper in an article published Thursday. 'They were repetitive; copies of one another.'

HONG KONG, Oct 17, 2007 (AFP) - Staggering prices for art from China at recent auctions reflects the huge appetite for both the spectacular investment returns and a fascination with all-things Chinese, experts say.

Last Friday, a painting by avant-gardist Yue Minjun based on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests fetched more than 2.9 million pounds (5.96 million US) at a Sotheby's sale in London, a record for contemporary Chinese art at auction.

PARIS, Oct 15, 2007 (AFP) - Alain Delon, the 71-year-old star of French cinema, sold part of his huge art collection for a better-than-expected 8.7 million euros (12.4 million dollars) at a Paris auction on Monday.

The most expensive work, a large 1954 painting by Jean-Paul Riopelle titled 'La vallee de l'oiseau' (The Valley of the Bird), sold for 882,740 euros (1.25 million dollars), or 750,000 euros (1.06 million dollars) excluding fees, the Cornette de Saint-Cyr auction house said.

LONDON, Oct 14, 2007 (AFP) - A painting originally handed over by Francis Bacon to cover the rent on his west London studio was the highlight of a record-breaking Christie's auction of post-war and contemporary art on Sunday.

'Study from the Human Body, Man Turning on the Light' -- which Bacon originally gave to the Royal College of Art in 1969 as rent for a Cromwell Road studio -- fetched 8,084,500 pounds (11,528,497 euros, 16,371,113 dollars), as the Christie's auction totalled 39.8 million pounds.

PARIS, Oct 14, 2007 (AFP) - Gustave Courbet's best-known work 'The Origin of the World', an up-close painting of a woman's pudenda, parted thighs and torso, was considered so scandalous it was kept hidden from public view for 120 years.

For the first time in three decades, a major retrospective of the 19th-century French artist's work, opening in Paris this week before going to New York, explores how Courbet's taste for rule-breaking influenced his generation and the next.

TEHRAN, Oct 13, 2007 (AFP) - A video installation by world-famous US artist Bill Viola. Contemporary Japanese art tackling AIDS. A print by an Iranian filmmaker whose most recent work was not shown in the Islamic republic.

Perhaps not what you would expect to find in central Tehran, currently in the midst of its strictest moral crackdown in years and capital of a country increasingly at odds with the West over its controversial nuclear programme.

LONDON, Oct 13, 2007 (AFP) - The record price for a Chinese contemporary artwork was smashed in London on Friday, Sotheby's auction house said, for a painting based on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing.

Yue Minjun's 'Execution' fetched 2,932,500 pounds (5,964,700 dollars, 4,210,300 euros) after two telephone bidders battled it out. The pre-sale estimate was between 1.5 and two million pounds.

The previous highest price paid at auction for a Chinese avant-garde artist was set in June for Yue's 1997 work 'The Pope' for 2.15 million pounds.

PARIS, Oct 12, 2007 (AFP) - Alain Delon, 71-year-old star of French cinema, is selling off part of his huge art collection at a Paris auction next week estimated to ring up between 4.6 and 6.2 million euros (6.5 to 8.7 million dollars).

Bidding farewell to the 40 oils from the 1950s -- including works by Hartung, De Stael and Soulages -- a smiling Delon on Thursday night said to AFP: 'Why be sad, given it was me that decided they go.'

LONDON, Oct 11, 2007 (AFP) - A sculpture showing Prince Harry, who was stopped from serving with the British army in Iraq, 'dead' in his military uniform went on show at a London art fair Thursday.

The piece, entitled 'Iraq War Memorial Featuring The Death Of Prince Harry, The Martyr of Maysan Province,' suggests how Harry -- son of Prince Charles and the late princess Diana -- would look had he gone to Iraq and been killed.

LONDON, Oct 11, 2007 (AFP) - A major new exhibition opened at the National Portrait Gallery in London on Thursday, bringing together 52 key works from one of the world's most popular and influential art movements -- Pop Art.

'Pop Art Portraits' contains works from 28 artists from Britain and the United States, including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and David Hockney, and is designed to show how the genre revolutionised portrait painting.

LONDON, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - Raunch was firmly on show Wednesday as London's Barbican cultural centre opened its doors on an exhibition presenting a history of sex through the ages.

'Seduced: art and sex from Antiquity to now' depicts the changing way sexuality has been represented over the last 2,000 years, from ancient Roman marbles to hard-core modern-day photos and videos.

Entry to the exhibition, which includes pieces like the 41-minute long 'Blowjob' by Andy Warhol and 'Ilona on Top' by US artist Jeff Koons, is banned for under-18s.

LONDON, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - A series of high-profile contemporary art auctions is set to begin in London Friday, as rising levels of interest in the genre have prompted auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's to stage competing sales.

'Contemporary art is becoming a global language, the interest is massive,' Francis Outred, head of evening auctions and private sales at Sotheby's, told AFP.

'We've seen a generational change that is certainly here to stay,' Outred said, adding that new 'masterpieces are created all the time which is not the case for Manet or Van Gogh.'

LONDON, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - A retrospective of Louise Bourgeois, covering the gamut of the 95-year-old French-American sculptress's work, is set to open at London's Tate Modern museum on Wednesday.

'Maman', one of her more famous works depicting a nine-metre (30-foot) giant spider in bronze and stainless steel, has already been on display for a week on the promenade which separates the museum from the river Thames, inviting the public into the exhibiton to explore her career.

PARIS, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - The French parliament on Tuesday approved plans to build a branch of the Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi, despite opposition from leftists who say the venture cheapens France's top art institution.

The National Assembly endorsed the deal reached this year with Abu Dhabi to help develop the museum on an island off the coast of the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

MADRID, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - A major exhibit of German Renaissance art got underway Tuesday at Spain's Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid that highlights works by Albrecht Durer and Lucas Cranach the Elder.

The exhibit will feature 234 works of German art from the late 15th to the mid-16th centuries -- including 16 paintings by Durer and 26 by Cranach -- and it will run until January 6.

Called 'Durer and Cranach, Art and Humanism in the German Renaissance', the exhibit is billed as the first major retrospective of German Renaissance art ever held in Spain.

PARIS, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - French police on Tuesday detained five suspects who allegedly damaged a painting by Impressionst Claude Monet after breaking into the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, a judicial source said.

The four men and a young woman were questioned early Tuesday and placed in custody at a Paris police station after one of the suspects admitted to punching the painting while drunk, a source close to the investigation said.

ROUEN, France, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - A mummified head of a Maori warrior given to a French museum in the western city of Rouen in 1875 will be returned to New Zealand later this month, city officials said Tuesday.

A private collector left the mummified and tattooed head to the Rouen museum but it was not known how he came to own the artefact that was a popular collector's item in late 19th-century Europe.

PARIS, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - The French parliament was expected to approve plans Tuesday to build a branch of the Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi, despite amid opposition from leftists who say the venture cheapens France's top art institution.

Culture Minister Christine Albanel was to appear before the National Assembly to defend the deal reached this year with Abu Dhabi to help develop the museum on an island off the coast of the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

AVIGNON, France, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - A French woman went on trial Tuesday accused of vandalising a two-million-euro artwork by US artist Cy Twombly by planting a lipstick-red kiss on its pure white canvas.

The trial comes days after a drunken gang broke into the Musee d'Orsay in Paris and punched a hole in a painting by the French Impressionist Claude Monet, sparking a debate about security in French museums.

LONDON, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - A massive crack in a concrete floor -- said to symbolise racism and the gulf between white Europeans and the rest of humanity -- was unveiled Monday as the central exhibit at London's Tate Modern gallery.

'Shibboleth,' by Colombian sculptor Doris Salcedo, runs the full 167-metre (548-feet) length of the massive Turbine Hall at the famous gallery on the south bank of the River Thames.

KANO, Nigeria, Oct 7, 2007 (AFP) - An Islamic court in northern Nigeria has banned a play written by a civil rights activist which satirizes the implementation of Sharia law in 12 mainly Muslim states, court papers show.

The upper Sharia court in the Tudun Wada neighbourhood of the northern city of Kaduna issued an order restraining Shehu Sani from selling or circulating his play, 'Phantom Crescent'.

HONG KONG, Oct 7, 2007 (AFP) - A painting by renowned Chinese artist Cai Guoqiang sold for 2.6 million US dollars in Hong Kong Sunday, smashing the record he set at a New York auction only last month.

The 20-metre- (65-foot) long work, titled: 'Project for Extraterrestrials No 10: Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Metres,' went for 20.5 million Hong Kong dollars, more than the estimate, said auction house Sotheby's.

It uses Cai's signature style of gunpowder on paper to reflect a pyrotechnic event held in 1993 at Jiayuguan, where the Great Wall ends.

NEW YORK, Oct 6, 2007 (AFP) - A masterpiece by the French post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin showing Tahitian women bathing under mango trees could fetch 60 million dollars at auction in November, Sotheby's auction house said.

'Te Poipoi' ('The Morning'), an 1892 canvas showing Gauguin's two women women bathing in an idealized exotic spot, goes under the hammer at Sotheby's New York on November 7.

ROME, Oct 5, 2007 (AFP) - A massive retrospective of French Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin opens in Rome Saturday, pulling together 150 of his masterpieces from more than 50 collections around the world.

The focus of the exhibition will be the painter's relationship with the classical world and Rome in particular -- despite the fact he never visited the city.

Instead Gauguin devoured works by Ovid and Virgil to feed his imagination and inspire him.

LONDON, Oct 5, 2007 (AFP) - A sculpture showing Prince Harry, who was stopped from serving with the British army in Iraq, 'dead' in his military uniform will go on show at a London art fair, the artist said Friday.

The piece, entitled 'Iraq War Memorial Featuring The Death Of Prince Harry, The Martyr of Maysan Province', suggests how Harry -- son of Prince Charles and the late princess Diana -- would look had he gone to Iraq and been killed.

LONDON, Oct 5, 2007 (AFP) - Four men appeared in court in Scotland Friday charged in connection with the theft of a Leonardo da Vinci painting worth more than 15 million pounds (21.6 million euros, 30.6 million dollars).

'Madonna With The Yarnwinder' was taken from Drumlanrig Castle in southwest Scotland in August 2003 by thieves posing as tourists, who snatched the work from its fireproof case then fled in a waiting car.

Police retrieved the 500-year-old painting in a raid on a lawyers' office in Glasgow city centre on Thursday morning.

PARIS, Oct 5, 2007 (AFP) - Priceless works from Africa's pre-colonial heyday and a black child's pain in a white world -- legendary 500-year-old bronzes from Benin went on display in Paris this week, twinned unusually with a contemporary show about the African diaspora.

The paired shows at the almost brand-new Quai Branly tribal arts museum are part and parcel of its determination to offer space to contemporary works from Africa, Asia or Oceania in an ethnographic arthouse stuffed with 300,000 objects taken from their peoples in colonial times.

LONDON, Oct 4, 2007 (AFP) - British police arrested four men on Thursday after recovering a stolen Leonardo da Vinci painting worth more than 15 million pounds (22 million euros, 31 million dollars) in the Glasgow area of Scotland.

Madonna with the Yarnwinder' had been stolen in August 2003 from Drumlanrig Castle in Scotland's southwest by thieves posing as tourists, who snatched the Da Vinci from its fireproof case in the castle's oak staircase gallery, then fled in a waiting car.

ROME, Oct 4, 2007 (AFP) - Rome's newly restored Palazzo delle Esposizioni was to reopen on Friday with three major exhibitions featuring abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, US film great Stanley Kubrick and Italian sculptor Mario Ceroli.

The monumental neoclassical building was closed for five years for restoration work that included expanding the cinema and equipping a lecture hall with multimedia technology.

PARIS, Oct 3, 2007 (AFP) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his predecessor Jacques Chirac on Wednesday made a joint visit to a Paris museum of oriental arts, in the company of Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal.

According to Sarkozy's office, the president invited Chirac -- a keen amateur of eastern arts who oversaw the renovation of the Guimet Museum in Paris -- to take part in the visit.

Mittal donated the museum a Himalayan bronze of Avalokiteshvara, the most widely revered bodhisattva in Buddhism.