RIO DE JANEIRO, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Criminals stole four art masterpieces, including two engravings by Pablo Picasso, from a picture gallery run by the Sao Paulo state government, local media reported on Thursday.

    They took away Picasso's engravings, The Artist and His Model (1963) and Minotaur, Fountain and Women (1933), as well as an oil on canvas entitled Women at the Window (1926) by Brazilian painter Emiliano Di Cavalcanti and a gouache on board Couple (1919) by Brazilian-Lithuanian artist Lasar Segall from the gallery Estacao Pinacoteca, said a statement of the state government.

    These masterpieces, whose total value was estimated at 1 million reais (611,000 U.S. dollars), were part of the Nemirovsky Collection which is on exhibition at Estacao Pinacoteca, said the statement.

    Police said two men, who were not wearing masks, entered the gallery and put the works in a bag. When a security guard tried to stop them, they threatened the guard with a gun and rushed to a car where a third person had been waiting for them.

    In the statement, the government confirmed that those guards working at the gallery were not armed with guns.

    In December 2007, burglars broke into Sao Paulo's Museum of Modern Art, also run by the state government, and stole two paintings, including Picasso's The Portrait of Suzanne Bloch (1904). The police recovered the masterpiece in January and arrested four suspects.