Sao Paulo (Brazil): Police have arrested a man suspected of stealing two Pablo Picasso prints last month from a museum in Sao Paulo, local media reported today. The O Estado de S Paulo Web site said police recovered Picasso's 1933 'Minotaur, Drinker and Women' shortly after the arrest last night in Guarulhos, an industrial suburb on the outskirts of Sao Paulo. The Sao Paulo State Public Security Department did neither confirm nor deny the reports.

On June 12, three robbers also stole Picasso's print 'The Painter and the Model' and the paintings 'Women at the Window' by Emiliano DiCavalcanti and 'Couple' by Lasar Segall. The prints and paintings have a combined estimated value of 1 million Brazilian reals ($630,000 at current exchange rates), Estacao Pinacoteca Museum officials had said previously. The July robbery was the second high-profile art heist in Sao Paolo in less than a year.

In December, the paintings 'Portrait of Suzanne Bloch' by Picasso and 'O Lavrador de Cafe' by Candido Portinari, an influential Brazilian artist, were stolen from the Sao Paulo Museum of Art by three men who used a crowbar and car jack to force open one of a steel door. The framed paintings were found on January 8, covered in plastic and leaning against a wall in a house on the outskirts of Sao 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.

Source : PTI