Picasso Painting Reported Missing While En Route to Exhibition

Spanish authorities are investigating the disappearance of a Pablo Picasso painting that reportedly went missing during its transportation to an exhibition.

According to Rokna, citing CNN, The 1919 gouache piece, Still Life with Guitar (12.7 cm by 9.8 cm / 5 x 3.9 inches), was scheduled to be displayed starting October 9 as part of a temporary exhibition at the CajaGranada Cultural Center in the southern Spanish city of Granada. Owned by a private collector, the work was insured for an estimated 600,000 euros ($700,000), the CajaGranada Foundation, which oversees the cultural center, confirmed to Reuters on Friday.

According to the foundation, a van from a transport company arrived the Friday before the exhibition to deliver works from Madrid. All artworks were moved in a single, continuous transfer from the van to a freight elevator, which transported all employees simultaneously from floor -1 to floor 1. The items were then relocated under video surveillance to the exhibition hall.

After confirming the origin of each package, the exhibition manager coordinated with the transport company to sign for the delivery before unpacking the works the following Monday. The packages remained under video monitoring throughout the weekend. When unpacking commenced at 8:30 a.m. Monday, the staff had positioned all pieces except for Picasso’s Still Life with Guitar (Naturaleza muerta con guitarra), which was then reported missing to the police.

Granada police confirmed that an investigation is ongoing to determine the time and location of the painting’s disappearance. The missing artwork has also been added to the international database of stolen art, though authorities noted there is no international police cooperation currently originating from Granada.

Picasso’s works have long been targets for thieves, with some fetching as much as $179 million at auction. Notably, in 2019, a Dutch art detective recovered Picasso’s 1938 Portrait of Dora Maar, valued at $28 million, two decades after it was stolen from a Saudi sheikh’s yacht off the south coast of France. In 2021, Greek authorities retrieved Picasso’s Head of a Woman and Piet Mondrian’s Landscape with a Mill nearly a decade after a daring heist at Athens’ National Art Gallery. Last year, Belgian police recovered Picasso’s stolen Tête in a basement in Antwerp.