Palm Beach Picassos Pilfered

Police say two Pablo Picasso etchings worth a combined $450,000 have been stolen from a gallery in Palm Beach, Florida.

Authorities responded to an alarm at Gallery Biba at about 3:40 a.m. Thursday. Palm Beach police spokeswoman Janet Kinsella says a glass back door had been smashed and the two etchings were missing.

She says the etchings were valued at $150,000 and $300,000.

The Palm Beach Post reports that one of the works is Jacqueline Lisant, (Jacqueline Reading), a linoleum cut 1964 print; the other is Le Repas Frugal (The Frugal Repast), dry paint laid on Japan paper, from 1904.

Tim Luke, a local appraiser who had been researching in the gallery just yesterday, described the etchings to the Post as "typical Picasso stick-figure drawings" matted and framed in a golden leaf design. He said an early Picasso etching sold for $1.5 million at auction this year, but that factors such as time period and size factor into an individual piece's value.

Luke said that the usually procedure is for police and the gallery's owners to send digital images of the etchings to stolen-art networks. "It's going to be very difficult to fence these," he told the newspaper.