A painting by Pablo Picasso valued at 600,000 euros disappeared in transport between the owner’s house, in Madrid, and the location of an exhibition in Granada, the Spanish police and the CajaGranada Foundation confirmed this Thursday, October 16th.
The disappearance of “Nature morte à la guitare” (“Still Life with Guitar”), a 1919 work by the Spanish Pablo Picasso, measuring just 12.7 centimeters high and 9.8 centimeters wide, was reported to the Spanish national police on October 10th by the CajaGranada Foundation.
This institution explained in a statement that a company specializing in the transport of works of art delivered to it on October 3, at the CajaGranada Cultural Center, more than fifty paintings with different origins taken from Madrid to be included in the exhibition “Still Life. The Eternity of the Inert”.
Always according to the same statement, the delivered works were deposited in a space at the foundation, with permanent video surveillance, until October 6th, when they were unpacked and those responsible for the institution and the exhibition discovered that a painting, “Nature morte à la guitarre”, was missing, despite it appearing on the transport guides.
Upon arriving at the foundation, the works were removed from the van that transported them and placed on a freight elevator, from where they were removed, on another floor, in a space with video surveillance, and then deposited in the room where they remained until they were unpacked, where there are also cameras permanently, said CajaGranada.
The foundation revealed that “not all packages were properly numbered” upon arrival and therefore “it was not possible to carry out an exhaustive check without unpacking”, so the transport notes were signed “pending unpacking on Monday”, October 6th.
Sources investigating the case cited by several local media outlets revealed this Thursday that the journey of around 400 kilometers between Madrid and Granada, in the south of Spain, to transport the works (57, initially) took two days to complete, this being one of the aspects on which the investigation is focusing.
The paintings were transported in a van in which two people followed. After leaving Madrid, they stopped around 27 kilometers from their destination, where they slept in a small hotel, with the two people allegedly taking turns to watch the van, said police sources cited by the Spanish press.
Road trips to transport works of art comply with various packaging rules and require slow driving speeds, so as not to damage the pieces, as recalled by some experts in this type of transport also cited by the Spanish press today.
The identity of the owner of “Nature morte à la guitare” has not yet been revealed. It is only known that he is a private collector who acquired the Picasso painting a few years ago for 60,000 euros and that he kept it in a residence in Madrid, from where it was taken on September 25th, by a company specializing in the transport of works of art, with the aim of being included in the Granada exhibition.
According to the CajaGranada Foundation, the work has now been valued for insurance purposes at a value of 600 thousand euros.
The exhibition “Still Life. The Eternity of the Inert” was opened by the CajaGranada Cultural Center as planned, on October 9th, and includes works by Juan Gris, María Blanchard, René Magritte and Fernando Botero, among others, who traveled in the van that left Madrid on October 2nd towards Granada and which allegedly also carried Picasso’s missing painting.
Spanish police said today that the investigation is ongoing and that so far there have been no arrests.