Freud's portrait of Francis Bacon was stolen from a show in Berlin in 1988. In 2001, having spent years missing the work, Freud decided to take matters into his own hands, and designed a Wanted poster offering a reward for the painting's return. The portrait remains missing Photograph: Tate
Rauschenberg deliberately rubbed out a drawing that de Kooning had agreed to donate to him. The near-blank sheet of paper was then exhibited as an altogether new work, credited to Rauschenberg. Today, it is one of the most renowned works by this audacious, subversive artist Photograph: Estate of Robert Rauschenberg. DACS, London/VAGA, New York
This artist attempted to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Massachusetts to England for his performance work In Search of the Miraculous. He went missing on the journey, and his body has never been found – the ultimate act of self-sacrifice or creative destruction Photograph: Courtesy of the Bas Jan Ader Estate, Mary Sue Ader-Andersen and Patrick Painter Editions
Within a year of Sutherland's portrait arriving at Churchill's home Chartwell, Churchill's wife had smashed it to pieces in the cellar and given the remains to an employee to burn Photograph: The Estate of Graham Sutherland
US artist Paul Thek’s legendary 1960s Tomb was a ziggurat with a dead hippie mannequin inside that bore a strong likeness to the artist. It remains a hugely influential work today, despite the fact that it does not exist and is known only through descriptions or piecemeal images. The work vanished simply because Thek allowed it to dematerialise Photograph: John (Hans) and Trude Schiff Collection, Courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute/The George Paul Thek Estate, New York, courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York
When Rachel Whiteread cast the interior of an East End house in concrete in 1993 she created a ghostly masterpiece. Unfortunately, the local council thought otherwise and resisted pleas to preserve the powerful sculpture Photograph: Courtesy The Gagosian Gallery
Emin’s embroidered tent was lost in a 2004 warehouse fire in Leyton, east London, in which many works from Charles Saatchi's art collection were also lost Photograph: Courtesy Jay Jopling/White Cube
Freundlich's Large Head (New Man) sculpture – one of the most important modernist works created in the country before the first world war – was featured as part of the Degenerate Art show that was put on by the Nazis in Munich in 1937. The exact story of the work's end is unknown, but it is thought that the Nazis destroyed it along with all other modernist works considered to go against the order Photograph: akg-images
This absinthe-addled pioneer of the avant garde, who treated his paintings very casually during his lifetime, cut off part of the canvas himself. After his death, it was cut up even more to be sold in pieces. Eventually, Degas bought all the fragments he could find and pasted them together as best he could. Today, Degas' reassembled Manet hangs in the National Gallery in London Photograph: National Gallery London
Rivera's mural was stripped from the entrance hall of the Rockefeller Center in New York in 1934 because it was deemed to be too communist in nature (note Lenin, mid-right) Photograph: Lucienne Bloch/Courtesy Old Stage Studios
This was painted as a mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. Its story after the fair remains a mystery, and only black and white images remain of the work Photograph: Succession / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2011
Picabia overpainted many of his own canvases, one of the earliest of which was Hot Eyes or Les Yeux Chauds. Following the overpainting, the work became The Fig-leaf, now part of the Tate's collection. The Tate's conservation team took this image under raking light, which was able to show both works simultaneously Photograph: Courtesy Comite Picabia, Paris / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2011
![Lost Art 2: Kurt Schwitters, Merz Building [Detail: Stairway Entrance Side], 1933](http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/6/29/1340965634824/Kurt-Schwitters-Merz-Buil-001.jpg)
The German artist Schwitters created a dadaist grotto in his family home in Hanover called the Merzbau. Its centrepiece was known as the Cathedral of Erotic Misery and held relics from nail clippings to hair and a bottle of Schwitters’ urine. The work was destroyed in 1943 by allied bombing Photograph: Aline Gwose / Michael Herling, Sprengel Museum Hannover / DACS, London 2012
