London ( CNN ) -- He may be one of the most sought-after painters you have never heard of , but Emil Filla 's name is doing the rounds of newsrooms and international art-loss registers following an audacious theft of his works from a collection in the Czech Republic . Four oil paintings by the Czech Cubist artist , who lived from 1882 until 1953 , were stolen on November 18 from a collection at a castle in Peruc , northwest of Prague . The works , which date from the 1920s to the 1940s , are estimated to be worth between 50 million and 80 million Czech crowns ( approximately $ 2.6 million and $ 4.2 million ) according to the Art Newspaper . A spokesperson for the Art Loss Register , an international database of stolen and missing works of art and antiquities , confirmed the works were still registered as stolen on their database . Chris Marinello , Executive Director and General Counsel of the Art Loss Register , said that if any of the paintings were offered to the register 's subscribing auction houses , they would be notified immediately . `` Either they are recovered relatively quickly or they will go underground and wo n't resurface for years , '' he said . The theft comes as interest in Filla 's work is rising both in the Czech Republic and abroad . In November , a painting by the artist dating from 1911 and entitled `` Utesitel '' ( `` Comforter '' in English ) was sold at an auction in Prague for 12 million Czech crowns ( approximately $ 640,000 ) , according to Galerie Art Praha , which staged the auction . A spokesperson for the gallery told CNN Filla is undoubtedly `` a major figure '' in avant-garde European painting , having exhibited across Europe and even in the U.S. between World Wars I and II , but has not had much exposure over the last 50 years . All that is changing , according to Czech art historian Vojtech Lahoda . `` Even though there are more collectors of Filla from the Czech Republic and Slovakia , there are more and more foreign collectors ( interested in his work ) , '' he said . The reason may be down to his famous contemporaries , Pablo Picasso , Georges Braque and Guillaume Apollinaire , whom Filla knew when he lived in Paris before World War I and who inspired him to adopt their Cubist style . According to Lahoda , his work presents `` the other face of Cubism , something that is very parallel ( to French Cubism ) but also different , '' and therefore increasingly sought-after by collectors of work from that style and period . `` It 's very difficult to buy the original Cubist works of Picasso and Braque from the 1910s but you can still buy Filla 's works from those years , '' said Lahoda . Though he can not say whether the theft of Filla 's paintings from the collection in Peruc is related to his recent upswing in popularity , Lahoda believes it may have been an opportunistic heist , with the thieves taking advantage of the collection 's reportedly limited security . `` The Peruc case is a very strange one , because the paintings that were stolen are known , they were published in catalogs and journals , so I would say they are publicly unsellable , '' he said , echoing Marinello 's fears they may go underground . Works by the artist are currently on display as part of an exhibition on Czech Modernism at the Gallery of Visual Art in Ostrava , Czech Republic , entitled `` Black Suns : Reverse Side of Modernity 1927 -- 1945 . '' `` If you want a good collection of Czech modern art from the 1920s and 30s , you ca n't miss ( Filla ) , '' said Lahoda .
Works by Czech artist Emil Painter stolen in audacious manner from museum near Prague . Four paintings worth between $ 2 million and $ 3 million taken from collection at Peruc . Painter 's popularity is growing among local and international art collectors . Filla was once a contemporary of Picasso and Braque , exhibited across Europe and in U.S .