Thieves carried out a well-organised,pre-dawn heist at Greeces biggest state art museum Monday,taking two oil paintings by 20th century masters Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian,the police said. The burglars who entered through a balcony door also took a pen and ink drawing of a religious scene by Italian 16th century painter Guglielmo Caccia. It said a fourth work by Mondrian also was removed from the National Art Gallery,but the thieves abandoned it as they fled. Museum officials were unable to immediately estimate how much the stolen works were worth. The missing Picasso work is of a cubist female bust. The police said the heist took seven minutes. The thieves set off alarms on several occasions since Sunday without entering the building,prompting guards to disable one alarm. They still triggered a sensor,but a guard only got there to see a man running off.
