The police in Slovenia investigate the disappearance of a bronze statue of the First Lady of the United States, Melania Trump, who was sawn off at the feet and taken away from her hometown.
Life -sized sculpture near Sevnica in Central Slovenia, where Melanijnja Knavs was born in 1970, was unveiled in 2020 during the first term of office of US President Donald Trump.
It replaced a wooden statue that was set on fire earlier that year.
A statue that the US First Lady Melania Trump represents near her hometown in Slovenia has been cut and removed. ((AP: Darko Bandic))
Spokesperson for the Alenka Drenik Rangus police said on Friday that the police were aware of the theft of the statue on Tuesday.
She said the police were working to detect those responsible.
The shoes of the statue are everything that remains on top of the wooden tree trunk in the village of Rozno, where the monument was originally placed. ((AP: Relja sok))
According to the Slovenian media reports and the maker of the statue, the American conceptual artist Brad Downey, the bronze replica was sawn off at the ankles and removed.
Franja Kranjc, who works in a bakery in Sevnica who sells cakes with the name of Mrs. Trump to support the First Lady, said that the stolen statue would not be missed.
“I think nobody was really proud of this statue, not even the First Lady of the USA,”
he said.
“So I think it’s okay that it has been removed.”
The original wooden statue was set on fire in July 2020. The rustic figure was cut from the tribe of a Linden Tree by the local artist Ales Zupevc and showed the First Lady in a light blue dress as she wore at the presidential inauguration of Mr Trump in 2017.
The original statue was cut from the trunk of a linden tree and painted in a light blue dress to imitate the clothing that Mrs Trump wore during the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump 2017. ((AFP: Jure Makovec))
Mr Downey said he learned about the theft while preparing a new project in Germany and he was “a bit sad that it is gone”.
“My feeling [is] that it has something to do with the new elections [of Donald Trump]But who knows, right? “He said.
Mr Downey added that when the original statue was burned “it was not good”, so he decided to replace it with a bronze copy that he described as an “anti-monument, anti-propaganda”.
The arrival of Melania Trump in the White House Heef Hoop in Slovenia that Donald Trump could visit the country, but that still has to happen. ((AP: Jacquelyn Martin))
Mrs. Trump’s arrival in the White House when her husband became president, raised the hope that he could visit her home country one day, something that still has to happen. The First Lady left EU members of the EU when it was still part of the Communist Yugoslavia.
In Sevnica, about 90 kilometers east of the capital Ljubljana, she has inspired countless products, including cakes and chocolates, named after her.
The bronze statue of the replica has no clear resemblance to the First Lady.
AFP/AP
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