A gang of armed robbers on Thursday stole two Picasso engravings and two Brazilian paintings from a Sao Paulo museum in a bold daylight heist, officials said.

The four works grabbed from a branch of the Pinacoteca museum in the centre of the city were insured for a total of $568 400, a spokesperson for Sao Paulo's state secretariat for culture told AFP.

The robbery recalled a 20 December 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 $56-million — were recovered less than three weeks later by police, who made two arrests.

The Pablo Picasso engravings stolen on Thursday were 'Minotaur, Drinker and Women' (1933), and 'The Painter and the Model' (1963), each insured for $4200, the spokesperson said.

The two Brazilian works were 'Women at the Window' (1926), by Emiliano Augusto Cavalcanti de Albuquerque Melo — known better as Di Cavalcanti — and 'Couple' (1919), by the Lithuanian-born Brazilian artist Lasar Segall.

'Women at the Window', which was insured for $500 000, featured on the poster outside the museum advertising the exhibition, called 'A Collector's Eye'.

'Couple' was insured for $60 000.

The stolen works belonged to the Jose and Paulina Nemirovsky Foundation.

The robbery occurred around midday on the second floor of the museum, when three men carrying firearms and wearing masks rounded up the guards, the news website O Globo reported.

Security cameras recorded the crime.

A police unit dealing with organised crime was handling the investigation.

The director of the museums department for Brazil's Historic Heritage and National Architecture Institute, Jose do Nascimento, said the insurance values of the stolen works did not reflect their true market value.

He declined to put a value on them, telling the website of the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper that "those by Segall and Di Cavalcanti were reference works," and "the Picasso engravings gave a universal character to Brazilian museums."

"The value of these works is incalculable. I prefer not to give a figure," he said.

AFP