A bronze sculpture by Hans Arp has been reported stolen from Art Cologne, the world's oldest contemporary art fair. Galerie Ludorff reported its work "Sich aufrichtend" (Rising Up) missing from its stand, C-121, and has filed a police report, asking visitors to the fair to come forward with any information that could help recover it.

The theft was reported on November 10, two days after the fair closed its doors. Art Cologne ran from November 5 to 8, 2026, drawing dealers and collectors to the Koelnmesse halls for its 59th edition. The disappearance was first flagged in the German press on November 10 and picked up in Monopol magazine's media roundup the following day, which also noted the fair's early headlines had been dominated by Art Basel Paris's decision to discount gallery fees after its own early closure.

Arp, a co-founder of Dada and one of the defining sculptors of twentieth-century abstraction, made the biomorphic bronze forms for which he is best known from the 1930s onward. Small bronzes by established modernists are a recurring target for thieves: they are portable, instantly recognisable and difficult to sell openly once a theft is publicised, which often leaves them circulating in the shadows or being broken up for scrap.

The report comes in a season of art crime in France and Germany. Six stolen Picasso prints were recovered from a home on the French Riviera on November 3, a month after they were taken from a restaurant in Mougins, and nine pieces of imperial Chinese porcelain were stolen from Cologne's Museum of East Asian Art in September. Police have not said whether they have any leads on the Arp, and the gallery has not disclosed the sculpture's value.