Man steals Picasso's pencil drawing off the wall at SF art gallery

Police are on the hunt for a man who walked into a San Francisco art gallery, grabbed a valuable pencil drawing by Pablo Picasso off the wall and then fled in a waiting taxicab.

The drawing, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, was taken from the Weinstein Gallery near Union Square, police said. The gallery says Picasso created the one-of-a-kind drawing titled "Tete de Femme" in 1965, Telegraph informs.

"We're hoping someone in the public might recognize this piece, if they see someone walking around with it or trying to sell it," said Officer Albie Esparza, a police spokesman.

Many pieces of art are difficult to steal because of their sheer size, but Picasso's 1965 pencil drawing, "Tête de Femme (Head of a Woman)," is 10 5/8 by 8 1/4 inches, about the size of a standard sheet of paper.

It was part of a collection that Picasso originally gave to his driver, Maurice Bresnu, and was purchased this spring at auction for $122,500, said gallery President Rowland Weinstein, according to San Francisco Chronicle.