Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Two of four masterpieces stolen in Switzerland's biggest art theft were recovered undamaged close to the scene of the crime, police said today.

Claude Monet's ``Poppies Near Vetheuil'' and Vincent van Gogh's ``Blossoming Chestnut Branches'' were found late yesterday on the back seat a white Opel Omega car in a car park outside Zurich University's psychiatric clinic, Zurich police commandant Philipp Hotzenkoecherle said at a news conference.

``I'm filled with happiness that both paintings are in absolute impeccable condition,'' Buehrle museum director Lukas Gloor said. He identified the works and expects the paintings to be back in the E.G. Buehrle Collection ``in the next days.'' He couldn't say if a ransom was paid for the return of the two larger works, valued at about 70 million Swiss francs ($64 million).

The other, smaller paintings stolen in Zurich on Feb. 10 are Edgar Degas's ``Count Lepic and His Daughters'' and Paul Cezanne's ``Boy in the Red Vest,'' the symbol of the collection and most expensive work taken, Gloor said.

Police didn't say if a forensic search of the vehicle and area proved further clues. They said they didn't know how long the car was in the public car park, which is about 700 meters (2,300 feet) from the 19th-century villa where the works were stolen.

Decision on Reward

Authorities will determine how much of the 100,000 Swiss franc reward for information leading to the recovery of the four works will be paid to the unidentified 56-year old parking-lot attendant who discovered the paintings during a routine patrol, police spokesman Marco Cortesi told reporters.

One of the men involved in the theft threatened museum personnel with a pistol and forced them to the floor while the other two robbers grabbed paintings nearest to the door of the ground-floor exhibition hall. One of the robbers spoke German with a Slavic accent, police said.

The art theft was the second in Switzerland in less than a week. Two Picasso oils belonging to Germany's Sprengel Museum were stolen from an exhibition in Pfaeffikon, near Zurich, on Feb. 6.

The Zurich thieves probably were amateurs in the art world, imitating the more professional theft of the Picassos in a ``copy-cat crime,'' said Dick Ellis, a London-based art-crime consultant who used to head Scotland Yard's art squad.

``The fact that the paintings were quickly recovered means that they hadn't considered how they could realize money from the theft,'' Ellis said in a telephone interview today. ``Though it was a well-executed and well-planned theft, they didn't know what to do with the paintings.''

Missing Picassos

Ellis added, ``The two Picassos from the earlier theft are still missing. That tells you the Picasso thieves were probably the professional thieves.''

Emil Buehrle was a German-born industrialist who took over Swiss machinery maker Oerlikon and made it into Buehrle & Co., an arms exporter, in the early 1940s. Buehrle, who studied art history in his native country, started buying paintings when he bought a house on Zurich's Zollikerstrasse. The E.G. Buehrle Collection is housed next to his former home.

During World War II, Buehrle bought about 100 paintings, 13 of which were later determined to have been brought to Switzerland illegally, according to his foundation. He purchased nine of them a second time after legal battles over their return.

The collection will move to Zurich's Kunsthaus in 2015, when that museum expects to complete construction of a new building.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said losses from art and cultural-property crime total about $6 billion a year. The biggest U.S. art heist involved works valued at about $300 million, including Rembrandts, which were stolen from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990, the FBI said on its Web site.

To contact the reporter on this story: Joseph Heaven in Zurich at jheaven1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 19, 2008 11:30 EST