A tiny Picasso painting has vanished whilst it was being moved from Madrid to Granada in Spain.
Spanish police have launched an investigation into the disappearance of the ‘Still Life With Guitar’ painting which was scheduled to go on display at an exhibition in the southern city.
The oil-on-canvas painting is valued at 600,000 euros (£520,000) and was set to be on show at an event organised by the CajaGranada foundation, which opened last week, local newspaper Ideal reported.
However the picture, which was painted by Pablo Picasso in 1919, never made it to its destination.
The artwork, alongside all of the others in the show, is privately owned. A collector in Madrid owns the painting and had loaned it for the show.
A van carrying the paintings arrived in Grenada on Friday, October 3, but the foundation did not discover the artwork was missing until Monday.
The foundation said the delivery was unloaded and checked but some of the carefully packaged works had not been numbered, which hindered their ability to check the contents thoroughly.
National police sources confirmed that the painting’s disappearance was under investigation but provided no further details, citing confidentiality rules.
Spanish media suggested the van may have stopped overnight near Granada, and that the two people aboard may have taken turns guarding its contents.
Thieves have frequently targeted Picasso works given their high value – two of his paintings sold for more than $140 million at auctions in recent years.
One of the most notorious thefts occurred in 1976, when more than 100 of the artist’s paintings were stolen from the Palais des Papes museum in Avignon, southern France.
All of the works were eventually recovered.
Pablo Picasso, who was born in 1881 in Malaga in southern Spain and died in 1973, is widely acknowledged as one of the most important artists of all time.
He challenged conventional ideas and experimented with a wide range of styles and themes throughout his long career.
