SAO PAULO.- Thieves went into the Estacao Pinacoteca in Sao Paulo and stole four paintings during the day. The thieves stole engravings by Pablo Picasso titled "Minotaur, Drinking Fountain and Women" and "The Artist and His Model". Two brazilian paintings Women At The Window (1926) by Emiliano Augusto Cavalcanti de Albuquerque Melo,, known better as Di Cavalcanti, and Couple (1919) by Lasar Segall, were also stolen.

The artworks, belonging to the Jose and Paulina Nemirovsky Foundation and worth in total about 1 million reais ($613,000), were on display in the Pinacoteca Station annex of the museum.

In today's heist, three robbers bearing guns took the paintings around noon local time, said Ana Catarina Flaquer, a spokeswoman for the Sao Paulo state police department.

Police delegates Gaetano Del Vegine, Youssef Abul Chaina and Secretary of Culture João Saad held a news conference where they presented the sketches police made of the thieves who stole the four paintings.

In December, Picasso's "Portrait of Suzanne Bloch" 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 the museum's steel doors.

The framed paintings were found Jan 8., covered in plastic and leaning against a wall in a house on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, South America's largest city.