This security image, provided by Lefty O'Douls restaurant, shows the suspect walking away from the Weinstein Gallery in San Francisco with a Pablo Picasso drawing.
Authorities in San Francisco are hunting for an art thief who walked into a gallery in the city, grabbed a drawing by Pablo Picasso off the wall and made his getaway in a waiting taxicab.
The brazen theft of the drawing -- which was being offered for sale for more than $200,000 -- was reported at 11:41 a.m. local time by the Weinstein Gallery near Union Square, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
"I don't know if employees were just busy, but he literally walked in, grabbed it and walked out and got into a cab," said police spokesman Albie Esparza.
The artwork -- a pencil drawing from 1965 titled "Tet de Femme (Head of Woman)" -- is about the size of a standard piece of paper.
Gallery president Rowland Weinstein said it was part of a collection Picasso originally gave to his driver Maurice Bresnu, and was purchased this spring at auction for $122,500.
Witnesses described the Picasso thief as a white man in his 30s wearing loafers and dark glasses.
Newscore contributed to this report.
The hottest stories ripped from the headlines, from crime to courts, legal and scandal.
