€8million Picassos stolen from museum

Both CCTV cameras and alarms are believed to have been switched off when an album with 33 Picasso sketches was grabbed

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A THIEF has grabbed an €8million album of 33 Picasso sketches from a Paris museum display case while both CCTV and special alarms were switched off.

The theft from the Picasso Museum in the Marais is the latest in a series over recent years and came during a temporary exhibition which has restricted security cover.

It happened on Monday night or early on Tuesday and police said: “This appears to be a well-organised theft. The works will almost certainly be impossible to sell on the open market."

The red book of pencil sketches is dated between 1917 and 1924. It has drawings from his travels in France and from Barcelona.

Picasso did more than 20,000 pieces during his life and his work is the world’s most recognisable and the most stolen. There are 500 pieces on the London-based Art Loss Register of stolen art.

Two Picasso paintings, worth €50m, were stolen from his granddaughter’s home in Paris two years ago and, in 1976, 118 works were stolen from a museum in Avignon.

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