A sketchbook of drawings by Spanish master Pablo Picasso valued at eight million euros (11 million dollars) has been stolen from a Paris museum, police said Tuesday.

Thieves seized the sketchbook from the Picasso Museum in central Paris where officials discovered it missing on Tuesday morning, a police official told AFP.

Works by Picasso, one of the most important artists of the 20th century, fetch record prices at auctions.

The Picasso Museum houses more than 250 paintings, 160 sculptures and 1,500 drawings by the Spanish artist in a former mansion of the fashionable Marais district of Paris.

The museum was closed on Tuesday when the theft was discovered.

Two Picasso paintings worth an estimated 50 million euros were taken from the Paris home of Diana Widmaier-Picasso, the artist's granddaughter, in February 2007.

Four Picasso works stolen from a museum in Sao Paulo, Brazil in June 2008 were recovered undamaged a few weeks later. (AFP)