Two armed criminals broke in St. Paul’s Libraryin Brazil and took eight engravings by the French painter Henri Matisse and at least another five by Brazilian artist Candido Portinari. The violent episode occurred this Sunday and at this point there is a strong police operation to find the thieves who have already been identified and whose faces have been released.
According to a statement from the Ministry of Public Security, the theft occurred at the Mario de Andrade Library in San Pablo, where Two armed men overpowered the security guard and an elderly couple who visited the library on the last day of the exhibition “From Books to Museums” to get their hands on the artistic works.
The incident occurred around 10 a.m. this Sunday. They went in and out of the main entrance.according to Brazilian authorities. According to them, they fled towards the nearest subway station. “After overpowering the guard, they made their way to the glass dome where some valuable documents and eight paintings were kept in a canvas bag,” the police detailed.
He drew attention to himself the lightness that criminals were able to break into Brazil’s second largest library and take valuable works.
From the office of the mayor of San Pablo it was assumed that the thieves had already been identified thanks to the cameras present on site, among others Facial recognition technology. Other cameras next to the library also captured images of the criminals escaping with the works.
There are 13 engravings stolen from the library, all of which were part of a joint exhibition with the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo. Nine correspond to the French artist and five to the Brazilian.
In the last few hours, Cadena O Globo broadcast images of the robbery in which A blue van was parked a few meters from the library The thieves would have used this to escape. A person can be seen in the vehicle who does not move at any time and would be a third member of the criminal gang.
You can also see one of the criminals carrying several canvases, first leaning them against a wall and then loading them onto the truck being searched by the police.
The attack on St. Paul’s Library comes less than two months after the art world was shocked by another heist at the Louvre Museum in Paris, in which thieves made off with jewels belonging to French royalty.
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