By Amarachi Orie, NCS
(NCS) — Spanish police are investigating the disappearance of a painting by Pablo Picasso after it apparently vanished on the way in which to an exhibition.
The 1919 gouache work “Still Life with Guitar,” which measures simply 12.7 centimeters by 9.8 centimeters (5 inches x 3.9 inches), was supposed go on show from October 9, as a part of a brief exhibition at CajaGranada Cultural Center within the southern Spanish metropolis of Granada.
The work is owned by a personal collector and was insured for an estimated 600,000 euros ($700,000), the CajaGranada Foundation, which owns the cultural heart, confirmed to Reuters Friday.
The Friday earlier than the exhibition was due to open, a van belonging to a transportation firm arrived on the cultural heart as scheduled to ship works from Madrid, CajaGranada Foundation stated in a press assertion Thursday.
All the works had been moved in a single, steady motion from the van to a freight elevator that took all of the transportation firm staff directly from flooring -1 to flooring 1, the middle stated.
The gadgets had been then transferred from the elevator to the exhibition corridor below video surveillance, in accordance to the assertion.
After verifying the origins of the totally different packages, the exhibition supervisor agreed with the transportation firm that the supply could be signed for, forward of the unpackaging of the items the next Monday.
The packages remained below video surveillance in any respect time over the weekend, and the unpacking started at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, in accordance to the middle.
The recordings have been checked and no incidents occurred over the weekend, it stated.
By mid-morning, the CajaGranada Foundation employees had completed unpacking the works and had positioned them within the room.
This is when the exhibition curator and head of exhibitions realized Picasso’s “Still Life with Guitar,” identified by its Spanish title as “Naturaleza muerta con guitarra,” was missing.
The basis then reported the missing work to the police, in accordance to the assertion.
The video recordings from the weekend had been checked and no incidents had occurred, it stated.
“An investigation is currently underway, and the investigation is attempting to determine when and where the painting disappeared,” Granada police stated in a press release to NCS on Friday.
The police stated the missing work has been added to the worldwide database of stolen artworks however famous that there isn’t any worldwide police cooperation at the moment being carried out from Granada.
Thieves have typically focused Picasso’s work, which have fetched up to $179 million at public sale.
In 2019, a Dutch art detective recovered Picasso’s 1938 masterpiece “Portrait of Dora Maar,” price $28 million, 20 years after it was stolen from the yacht of a Saudi sheikh off the south coast of France.
In 2021, Greek police recovered Picasso’s “Head of a Woman” and Piet Mondrian’s “Landscape with a Mill” virtually a decade after they had been taken in a daring heist on the National Art Gallery in Athens.
And final yr, Belgian police found Picasso’s stolen painting “Tête” in a basement within the metropolis of Antwerp.
The-NCS-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
Oscar Holland contributed to this report.