The Crying Boy

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The Crying Boy is a mass-produced print of a painting by Spanish painter Bruno Amadio, also known as Bragolin, that was popular in the United Kingdom in the 1980s.

On September 4, 1985, the British tabloid newspaper The Sun reported that a fireman from Yorkshire was claiming that undamaged copies of the painting were frequently found amidst the ruins of burned houses. He stated that no firefighter would allow a copy of the painting into his own house. Over the next few months, The Sun and other tabloids ran several articles on house fires suffered by people who had owned the painting.

By the end of November, belief in the painting's curse was widespread enough that The Sun was organising mass bonfires of the paintings, sent in by readers.

Karl Pilkington has made reference to these events on The Ricky Gervais Show.