Thief walks out of Brazilian library with eight Matisse artworks

Two armed men stole eight prints by French artist Matisse and at least five other prints by Brazilian painter Candido Portinari from a library in Sao Paulo.

Brazilian officials said thieves kidnapped a security guard and an elderly couple who were visiting the library and then stole the artworks on foot.

They reportedly entered the library through the main entrance at 10:00 (13:00 GMT) on Sunday and then left along the same route to the nearest metro station.

The robbery comes less than two months after a brazen break-in at the Louvre museum in Paris shocked the art world when thieves made off with priceless jewels.

The prints stolen from the Mario de Andrade Library on Sunday were part of a joint exhibition with the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo.

The thieves targeted the exhibition titled “From Books to Museums” on its final day.

Officials at the Bibilioteca Mário de Andrade, the country’s second-largest library, said its building in downtown São Paulo is equipped with cameras with facial recognition technology.

Police said they had successfully identified one of the two suspects and were working to identify the second suspect.

They also announced they had found the getaway car.

Officials have not released a detailed list of the stolen works, but Folha de São Paulo reported that a collage Matisse made for the limited edition art book “Jazz” was among the stolen works.

Matisse is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, and art critics say the value of the stolen works is “incalculable.”

The thieves also made off with at least five Portinari prints that were created to illustrate a special edition of Brazilian author José Lins Torrego’s novel “The Boy from the Plantation.”

Portinari often painted rural workers and laborers and was one of Brazil’s most important modernist artists.