Snet Solution: Picasso prints stolen from Brazil museum

SÃO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- Three heavily armed robbers stole two Pablo Picasso prints from an art museum in downtown São Paulo on Thursday, the city's second high-profile art theft in less than a year.

Armed robbers took a print of Picasso's "The Painter and the Model" from a museum in Brazil.

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The bandits also took two oil paintings by well-known Brazilian artists Emiliano Di Cavalcanti and Lasar Segall, said Carla Regina, a spokeswoman for the Pinacoteca do Estado museum.

The Picasso prints stolen were "The Painter and the Model" from 1963 and "Minotaur, Drinker and Women" from 1933, according to a statement from the São Paulo Secretary of State for Culture, which oversees the museum.

The prints and paintings have a combined value of 1 million Brazilian reals ($612,000), the statement said.

At noon, three armed men overpowered museum guards and grabbed the works, located on the second floor, the statement added. The museum was open to the public when the theft occurred, but it wasn't immediately clear whether anyone was visiting at the time.

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In December, Picasso's "Portrait of Suzanne Bloch" and "O Lavrador de Cafe" by Candido Portinari, an influential Brazilian artist, were stolen from the São 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 January 8, covered in plastic and leaning against a wall in a house on the outskirts of São Paulo, South America's largest 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.

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