Two paintings by Picasso and Candido Portinari stolen in Brazil during a daring dawn raid were uninsured.

Eduardo Cosomano, a spokesman for the Sao Paulo's museum of art, told the Associated Press (AP) agency that none of the paintings on exhibit, including Picasso's Portrait of Suzanne Bloch and Portinari's O Lavrador de Café, were covered.

When questioned he told the AP that insuring all of them would be "financially unviable".

He said the paintings were uninsured because their value, like all the others exhibited, was incalculable and therefore impossible to insure.

To protect the exhibits in the museum, he said, they had always relied on "unarmed guards patrolling the interior of the museum 24 hours a day".

"Obviously we will now have to rethink our entire security system," he added.

Robbers, armed with a crow bar and a car jack, took only three minutes to break into Latin America's most renowned art museum.

Police are working on the hunch that the paintings were stolen on the orders of a wealthy art lover looking to add to a collection

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