Robbers pay £1.25 gallery fee … and make off with two Picassos worth millions

Three armed robbers stole two Pablo Picasso prints from a Brazilian art museum yesterday in a rapid strike in which the thieves bypassed more valuable works to grab the stolen pieces, police said.

The thieves also took two oil paintings by well-known Brazilian artists from the Pinacoteca do Estado museum in Sao Paulo in the city’s second high-profile art theft in less than a year.

The Picasso prints stolen were The Painter And The Model from 1963 and Minotaur, Drinker And Women from 1933.

Along with the works by Brazilians Emiliano Di Cavalcanti and Lasar Segall, the Picassos have a combined value of one million Brazilian reals (£315,000).

About noon, three armed men paid the entrance fee of 4 reals (£1.25) and immediately went to the second-floor gallery where the works were being exhibited, bypassing more valuable pieces.

“This indicates to us that they probably received an order” for the specific works, said Youssef Abou Chain, head of the police’s organised crime unit in Sao Paulo, South America’s largest city.

The assailants overpowered three unarmed museum guards and grabbed the works. The robbery took just 10 minutes and the museum was nearly empty at the time.

The assailants took the pieces – frames and all – out of the museum in two bags. The institution has no metal detectors.

In December, Picasso’s Portrait Of Suzanne Bloch and a painting by influential Brazilian artist Candido Portinari were stolen from the Sao Paulo Museum of Art by three men who used a crowbar and car jack to force open one of the museum’s steel doors.

The framed paintings were found on January 8, covered in plastic and leaning against a wall in a house on the outskirts of the city.

One of the suspects in that heist – a former TV chef – turned himself over to police in January, who already had two suspects in custody.