Six paintings worth 10 million yuan (US$1.23m) stolen from a Guangzhou art studio last month were returned to their owners, the New Express said yesterday. The thief turned out to be a security guard employed by the studio.

Top Chinese artist Huang Yongyu, who painted the six pieces, traveled to Guangzhou from his hometown in Hunan Province on Sunday and thanked local police for recovering the paintings.

The Shimofang - or stone mill - art studio, was started in 2003 by a Guangzhou sculptor Xu Hongfei and seven other artists. It boasts a collection of paintings, calligraphy works, as well as sculptures by many famous Chinese artists.

The theft was reported Dec. 25 last year when the studio was being refurbished. Four workers found the paintings missing and noticed blood stains on the floor of the security room.

The security guard, identified as Ah Cheng, won the confidence of Xu, who gave him keys to every room in the studio. The man, in his early 20s, destroyed the cameras and the monitoring system before stealing the paintings. He also took away several DVD recordings of Huang creating the paintings.

Police decided Ah Cheng was the suspect and were able to track him down in Nantong, a city in East China's Jiangsu Province.

Huang's paintings are normally auctioned at between 540,000 yuan and 630,000 yuan per square meter in Hong Kong.

Editor: Yan