Brazilian police recover stolen paintings
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Picasso's Minotaur, Drinker And Women has not been recovered. (AFP: Pinacoteca do Estado, file photo)
Police have recovered two paintings by Brazilian artists that were stolen, along with two Picasso engravings, from a Sao Paulo museum two months ago.
The paintings - Women At The Window (1926) by Di Cavalcanti and Couple (1919) by Lasa Segall - were found in a bakery. The owner has been arrested.
Police had already recovered Picasso's 1963 engraving The Painter And His Model, but they are yet to find Minotaur, Drinker And Women (1933).
The engraving was found in the house of one of suspects.
The four pieces of art, which are estimated to be worth $US630,000 ($695,000) in total, were not insured.
The robbers walked into the Pinacoteca Museum on June 12 and went straight to the floor where the works were hanging.
After rounding up the guards, they put the works in bags and walked out of the building. Someone was waiting in a getaway car.
The robbery recalled a December 20 theft in the Sao Paulo Museum of Art in which another Picasso and a painting by a well-known Brazilian artist, Candido Portinari, were stolen during closing hours.
Those paintings - together valued at $US56 million - were recovered less than three weeks later by police.
Two arrests were made.
- AFP
