Dec. 8 (UPI) — Two men in Brazil stole 13 works of art from a museum in Sao Paulo from Brazil’s second-largest library, including art by famed French painter Henri Matisse.
On Sunday, thieves made off with eight engravings by Matisse and at least five by Brazilian painter Candido Portinari after walking in the entrance of Sao Paulo’s Biblioteca Mario de Andrade around 10 a.m. local time, the BBC and The New York Times reported.
According to Brazilian officials, the looters held up a visiting elderly couple and security guard prior to exiting the scene by the same route on foot toward a metro station with the payload.
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The stolen engravings were part of a joint exhibition with São Paulo Museum of Modern Art titled “From Book to Museum.”
The event at Biblioteca Mario de Andrade was on its final day.
Officials added that facial recognition technology had aided in identifying the suspects, who remain on the run.
It came a little more than a month after a brazen heist at the Louvre in Paris which saw more than $100 million worth of priceless French crown jewels.
In 2013, a $1 million Matisse painting stolen 25 years before from a museum in Sweden was recovered in Britain.
