Police in Spain are investigating the disappearance of a tiny Picasso painting, worth €600,000 (£520,000), which vanished en route from Madrid to an exhibition in the southern city of Granada.
The gouache and pencil work, Naturaleza muerta con guitarra (Still Life with Guitar), was due to go on show at a new exhibition at the CajaGranada foundation, which opened last week, The Guardian reported.
But the picture, which was painted in 1919 and measures 12.7cm x 9.8cm, never made it to the foundation’s Still Life: the Eternity of the Inert exhibition.
The painting belongs to a private collector in the Spanish capital and had been expected as part of a consignment of loaned exhibits that arrived by van from Madrid on Friday 3 October.
The foundation said that when the van arrived at 10am that day, its contents were unloaded and checked. Despite the fact that some of the carefully packaged works were not correctly numbered, making “an exhaustive check” impossible, the delivery was signed off and the van and its crew went on their way.
The following Monday, the pieces, which had been under video surveillance all weekend, were unpacked.
“Once the unpacking had been done, by the CajaGranada foundation’s own staff, the works were moved to different parts of the exhibition room,” the foundation said in a statement. “Mid-morning that day, the exhibition’s curator and the foundation’s head of exhibitions noticed that one work was missing. The piece is a small gouache by Pablo Picasso, called Still Life with Guitar.”
The foundation said it had reported the painting’s disappearance to the Policía Nacional, adding: “We have also put ourselves at the disposal of those investigating, and we have complete faith that the case will be properly resolved.”
Spanish media reports suggested the van may have stopped overnight near Granada, and that the two people aboard may have taken turns guarding its precious cargo.
