Spain’s National Police have found and identified Pablo Picasso’s 1919 painting Still Life with Guitar, which had been missing since October 3, when it was meant to have been transferred from Madrid to Granada for an exhibition. Officers now believe that the tiny painting, measuring about five by four inches (12.7 x 9.8 cm), may not have been loaded onto the transport truck at all, but remained behind in the capital, where it was finally located.
The artwork, a small gouache and graphite on paper, is framed and insured for €600,000 ($697,000). The piece, considered a minor work by the artist, was sold for €60,000, ($90,000) a few years ago, according to Ledor Fine Art, which specializes in the sale of Picasso’s works.
CajaGranada Foundation, which was in charge of the exhibition where the piece was to be displayed, “Still Life: The Eternity of the Inert, declined a request for comment from EL PAÍS.
The police had been investigating the disappearance since October 10, when CajaGranada Fundación filed a formal complaint after realizing that the painting had not arrived with 56 other works that had been transferred from Madrid.
Still Life with Guitar was stored on September 25 alongside the rest of the works to be transported to the CajaGranada Cultural Center. The foundation explained that on October 3, the transport company arrived at the cultural center’s facilities to deliver the artworks, an operation that was carried out under video surveillance. “As not all the packages were properly numbered, it was not possible to carry out a thorough check without unpacking them,” the entity explained.
It was on October 6, when the unpacking began, that the Picasso work was discovered missing, and a report was filed. Shortly after, the National Police registered the painting in Interpol’s international database of stolen or missing art objects, which contains descriptions and images of more than 57,000 items.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition
