Picassos worth £34m are stolen from granddaughter's Paris flat

Two paintings by Pablo Picasso worth €50m (£34m) have been stolen from the home of the painter's granddaughter in one of the most heavily guarded streets in Paris.

Both canvasses were regarded as among the painter's finest. They could never be sold on the open market but may have been the object of a "commissioned" theft for an unscrupulous collector. The theft of the paintings, and a small drawing, adds to a long catalogue of Picasso thefts in recent years.

The two paintings were taken on Monday night from the apartment of Diana Widmaier Picasso, one of the artist's granddaughters, on Rue de Grenelle in the heart of the ministerial quarter of the 7th Arrondissement. Police said there were no obvious signs of a break-in. Mme Widmaier and another person were sleeping in the flat at the time.

One of the paintings was stolen with its frame. The other was cut out. The first was identified as Maya à la poupée (Maya with a doll), 60x40cm, which was painted in 1938. It is one of two similar paintings of Maya, Picasso's daughter with his mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter. Maya was the mother of Mme Widmaier, who works as an art critic and historian.

The second, much larger, missing painting was a 1961 portrait of Picasso's second wife, Jacqueline Roque: Portrait de femme, Jacqueline, 170x150cm.

The Picasso family's lawyer, Maître Paul Lombard, said yesterday that the apartment was "adequately protected" by anti-theft devices. He said the paintings were "well-known worldwide". Although the property of the Picasso family, they had often been loaned to exhibitions or reproduced in books.

The Rue de Grenelle, where the theft occurred, is a short distance from the official residence of France's Prime Minister. All of the streets in the area are guarded and patrolled by police day and night.

The paintings of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) command higher auction prices than those of any other artist. His works are also among the most stolen in the world - partly because he was so prolific. There are now estimated to be 447 works by Picasso stolen and unaccounted for, ranging from drawings to ceramics to full-scale canvasses.

Antonia Kimbell, of the Art Loss Register, a database on stolen art, described the Paris thefts as "quite significant".

"Anything of particularly good quality, with the provenance of his granddaughter, would reach considerable value on the open market," Ms Kimbell said.

She pointed out, however, that stolen pieces often sold for a fraction of their true value. "It's unlikely that a legitimate dealer would purchase or acquire any of these pieces," she said.

In 1976, 118 Picasso works were stolen from a museum in Avignon. None have been recovered. In 1989, 12 paintings were stolen from the Cannes home of another of Picasso's granddaughters, Marina Ruiz Picasso. All were recovered soon afterwards.

In 1997, an armed man stole a Picasso from a London gallery and fled in a taxi. A still life was taken from the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 2004. Both works were recovered. Last year, four canvasses worth $50m were taken from a museum in Rio de Janeiro. All are still missing.