Police are investigating the disappearance of a Picasso artwork that was en route to an exhibition in Granada.
Pablo Picasso’s 1919 gouache painting, Naturaleza muerta con guitarra (Still Life with Guitar), has gone missing in Spain. According to a statement from Granada’s CajaGranada Fundación, the small-scale work was being transported from Madrid for the museum’s exhibition Bodegón: La eternidad de lo inerte (Still Life: The Eternity of the Inert) but was found to be missing when the delivery boxes were opened.
Roughly the size of an iPhone SE (12.7 x 9.8 cm), the artwork is valued at approximately €600,000 (about $700,500). The museum stated that on the morning of October 3, a transport company’s truck delivered the artworks, with the boxes brought inside in a single batch via forklift, under security camera surveillance. However, due to a mix-up in the numbering of the boxes, individual checks were not conducted.
During preparations for the exhibition, the boxes were opened on October 6, revealing that Picasso’s painting was not among them. According to El País, the vehicle transporting the artwork had two people on board, and the truck had stopped overnight near Granada. No arrests have been made so far, but police are working to determine at what point during the journey the painting disappeared.
CajaGranada Fundación issued a statement saying, “We have formally notified the National Police and have mobilized all our resources for the investigation. We believe the process will be resolved as soon as possible.”
Picasso’s works have frequently been targeted by thieves in the past. In 2012, his painting Tête d’Arlequin was stolen from a museum in the Netherlands, and in 2019, a French court revealed that Picasso’s former electrician had hidden 271 of the artist’s works in his garage for 40 years.
This latest incident underscores how vulnerable the works of one of modern art’s greatest figures remain to disappearance.
