Criminals steal Picasso's engraving from Sao Paulo's gallery
13/6/2008 17:45
Criminals stole four art masterpieces, including two engravings by Pablo
Picasso, from a picture gallery run by the Sao Paulo state government, local
media reported yesterday.
They took away Picasso's engravings, The Artist and
His Model (1963) and Minotaur, Fountain and Women (1933), as well as an oil on
canvas entitled Women at the Window (1926) by Brazilian painter Emiliano Di
Cavalcanti and a gouache on board Couple (1919) by Brazilian-Lithuanian artist
Lasar Segall from the gallery Estacao Pinacoteca, said a statement of the state
government.
These masterpieces, whose total value was estimated at 1 million
reais (US$611,000), were part of the Nemirovsky Collection which is on
exhibition at Estacao Pinacoteca, said the statement.
Police said two men,
who were not wearing masks, entered the gallery and put the works in a bag. When
a security guard tried to stop them, they threatened the guard with a gun and
rushed to a car where a third person had been waiting for them.
In the
statement, the government confirmed that those guards working at the gallery
were not armed with guns.
In December 2007, burglars broke into Sao Paulo's
Museum of Modern Art, also run by the state government, and stole two paintings,
including Picasso's The Portrait of Suzanne Bloch (1904). The police recovered
the masterpiece in January and arrested four suspects.
Xinhua
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