Picasso Still Life with Guitar missing during transport to Granada

Spanish police are investigating the disappearance of a small Pablo Picasso painting that vanished while being transported from Madrid to an exhibition in Granada. The 1919 gouache and pencil work Naturaleza muerta con guitarra, known in English as Still Life with Guitar, was part of a consignment of loaned pieces destined for a show organized by the CajaGranada Foundation and was insured for roughly 600,000 euros.

According to the foundation, a transport van from Madrid arrived at the CajaGranada Cultural Center on Friday, October 3. The delivery was unloaded, checked and signed for, and the packages remained under video surveillance over the weekend. When the foundation’s staff began unpacking the pieces the following Monday, the exhibitions curator and the head of exhibitions discovered that the Picasso work was missing and reported the disappearance to the Policía Nacional.

The foundation said many of the works were carefully packaged but not all packages were numbered, which complicated verification of the consignment at the time of delivery. The foundation added that the video recordings from the weekend had been reviewed and showed no incidents. In a statement, the...