{"id":237234,"date":"2025-10-24T15:36:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T15:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/237234\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T15:36:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T15:36:19","slug":"mystery-of-missing-picasso-still-life-painting-solved-pablo-picasso","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/237234\/","title":{"rendered":"Mystery of missing Picasso still life painting solved | Pablo Picasso"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fittingly enough for a still life, it would appear that the small Picasso painting that triggered a police investigation after apparently vanishing<\/a> while en route from Madrid to Granada for an exhibition earlier this month may never have moved from its pick-up point.<\/p>\n

Officers from Spain\u2019s Polic\u00eda Nacional force began searching for the gouache and pencil work Naturaleza muerta con guitarra (Still Life with Guitar) after it failed to arrive on a van that was bringing a consignment of loaned exhibits from the capital to the CajaGranada foundation on 3 October.<\/p>\n

The picture, which was painted in 1919 and small enough to fit into a handbag, is thought to be worth \u20ac600,000 (\u00a3525,000). Had it reached its destination, it would have been one of the stars of the foundation\u2019s Still Life: the Eternity of the Inert<\/a> exhibition. But it never did.<\/p>\n

The foundation said that although some of the works were carefully packaged they were not correctly numbered, making \u201can exhaustive check\u201d impossible. The delivery was nonetheless signed off and the van and its crew went on their way.<\/p>\n

The following Monday, the pieces, which had been under video surveillance all weekend, were unpacked.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce the unpacking had been done by the CajaGranada foundation\u2019s own staff, the works were moved to different parts of the exhibition room,\u201d the foundation said in a statement. \u201cMid-morning that day, the exhibition\u2019s curator and the foundation\u2019s head of exhibitions noticed that one work was missing. The piece is a small gouache by Pablo Picasso<\/a>, called Still Life with Guitar.\u201d<\/p>\n

The foundation reported the matter to the Polic\u00eda Nacional, who began to investigate.<\/p>\n

A week of speculation over the painting\u2019s fate came to a prosaic end on Friday, when the force announced that the work had been recovered.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may never have made it on the van,\u201d the Polic\u00eda Nacional said in a short statement. \u201cThe Historic Heritage Unit is keeping the investigation open and scientific police have opened the package containing the painting and are examining it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Guardian understand that despite the highly publicised hiccup, the foundation is still keen to take delivery of Still Life with Guitar so it can be exhibited as planned.<\/p>\n

Picasso\u2019s fame \u2013 and the enormous sums his works command \u2013 have long made his art a target for thieves around the world.<\/p>\n

In February 2007, two Picasso paintings worth a total of \u20ac50m (\u00a345m) were stolen from the Paris home of the artist\u2019s granddaughter<\/a>. Two years later, a Picasso sketchbook worth more than \u20ac8m<\/a> was stolen from a Paris museum dedicated to the artist.<\/p>\n

Twelve Picasso paintings, valued at about \u00a39m, were stolen from the French Riviera villa of another of his grandchildren, Marina Picasso, in 1989.<\/p>\n

Several other Picasso paintings have been stolen from galleries. In 1976, more than 110 works were stolen from a museum in the southern city of Avignon in one of France\u2019s largest art thefts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fittingly enough for a still life, it would appear that the small Picasso painting that triggered a police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-237234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}