Tiny Picasso painting goes missing just days before Granada exhibition

International

A TINY Picasso painting has vanished under mysterious circumstances just days before it was set to go on display in Granada, sparking an urgent police investigation.

The artwork, a 1919 gouache titled “Still Life with Guitar” measures just 12.7 centimeters by 9.8 centimeters (5 inches by 3.9 inches).

It was scheduled to be featured in a temporary exhibition beginning October 9 at the CajaGranada Cultural Center.

Owned by a private collector, the painting was insured for approximately 600,000 euros ($700,000), the CajaGranada Foundation, the organization that runs the cultural center, confirmed to Reuters on Friday.

According to the foundation, the transportation company delivering the works from Madrid arrived as planned on the Friday before the exhibition.

The foundation explained that all items were moved in a single, continuous operation from the van to a freight elevator, which transported all staff together from floor -1 to floor 1.

Once on the exhibition floor, the works were transferred to the hall under video surveillance. After verifying the origins of each package, the exhibition manager and the transportation company agreed the delivery could be signed for, with unpackaging scheduled for the following Monday.

The packages remained under camera surveillance over the weekend. When unpacking began at 8:30 a.m. Monday, staff had finished arranging the works in the exhibition hall by mid-morning. It was then that the curator and head of exhibitions discovered that Picasso’s Still Life with Guitar was missing.

The foundation immediately reported the disappearance to the police. Granada authorities told CNN, “An investigation is currently underway, and the investigation is attempting to determine when and where the painting disappeared.”

They confirmed that the missing work has been added to the international database of stolen artworks, although no international police cooperation is currently being coordinated from Granada.

Picasso’s works have frequently been the target of thieves, with paintings selling for as much as $179 million at auction. Past recoveries include the 1938 Portrait of Dora Maar, found 20 years after it was stolen from a Saudi sheikh’s yacht off southern France.

Greek authorities recovered Head of a Woman and Piet Mondrian’s Landscape with a Mill nearly a decade after a daring heist at Athens’ National Art Gallery. More recently, Belgian police located Picasso’s stolen Tête in a basement in Antwerp.

The investigation in Granada remains ongoing as authorities work to determine the painting’s whereabouts.(MyTVCebu)