Modern Art Feared Lost in London Fire

LONDON —  Police are investigating a warehouse fire thought to have destroyed a major swath of British art history, a spokesman said today.

More than 100 works by Britain’s leading contemporary artists are feared lost in the blaze, many of them belonging to millionaire art mogul Charles Saatchi.

“The building is still smoldering,” a police spokeswoman said.

Among the art thought to have been destroyed are many key pieces of the BritArt genre, including “Hell” by the Chapman Brothers and Tracey Emin’s tent installation titled “Everyone I Ever Slept With, From 1963 to 1995.”

Saatchi’s collection of contemporary art is one of the world’s finest, including such iconic pieces as Damien Hirst’s pickled sheep.

“I don’t know what specific pieces have been lost,” Saatchi told the Guardian newspaper.

Dinos Chapman told the Daily Telegraph newspaper he was certain that “Hell,” a tableau of dismembered toy soldiers depicting Nazis, had been destroyed.

“It has been burnt. We have had it confirmed by two or three sources,” he said. “We will just make it again. It is only art.”

The fire started early Monday in the warehouse of Momart, an art storage and transport firm.