Still Life with Guitar (1919) by Pablo Ruiz Picasso 12.7cm by 9.8cm Paper, Gouache & Pencil

A privately-owned Pablo Picasso painting, Still Life with Guitar (1919), has mysteriously vanished while being transported from Madrid to Granada for inclusion in an exhibition, prompting a police investigation into what appears to be a carefully orchestrated theft.

The gouache and lead pencil painting, insured for €600,000, ten times its estimated market value, was being loaned to Bodegón: La eternidad de lo inerte (Still Life: The Eternity of the Inanimate), an exhibition of 58 still life works from the 17th century and the 20th century, two key time periods in the still life genre.  The exhibition, organised by the CajaGranada Foundation in collaboration with CaixaBank, opened on 9 October and is set to run through 11 January 2026 and traces a journey of these works from the Flemish Baroque through to the Post Cubist period.

Unfortunately, when exhibition staff at the Centro Cultural CajaGranada-Motril  began unpacking the shipping crates to begin the installation they discovered that the Picasso work on paper was not among the other objects inventoried. 

The painting, loaned from a private Madrid collection had been packed on September 25 and departed the capital on October 2 in a van escorted by two couriers.  The brief, four-hour journey appears to have taken a puzzling turn as the couriers are said to have made an unusual overnight stop at 8:30 pm in Deifontes, a small town just 23 short kilometres north of the destination city, Granada.

Quoted in news articles,  Deifontes mayor Paco Abril Tenorio, said the decision by the drivers to stop overnight was “very strange.” “Granada is just over a quarter of an hour from here,” he told ABC newspaper. “I don’t understand why they had to stop here to spend the night.”

The couriers reportedly took turns sleeping inside the vehicle to guard their high-value cargo, which had a total insured value exceeding €6 million.  Their detour however, was not part of the agreed-upon itinerary and is now part of the focus of the police inquiry.

The van is said to have arrived at the CajaGranada-Motril Cultural Center the next morning, where the artworks were unloaded in a video-monitored surveillance zone and signed in by the exhibition manager.  However, because the crates were not individually numbered, staff were unable to confirm whether all items matched the shipment list without opening them. The boxes remained sealed under surveillance throughout the weekend, and it was only when curators began installation on Monday that Still Life with Guitar was discovered missing.

The foundation immediately alerted police, who are reviewing security footage and route logs to determine whether the disappearance occurred during the Deifontes stop, in transit, or after the paintings' arrival in Granada. No arrests have yet been made.

The theft adds to a long history of high-profile Picasso disappearances. His works—coveted by collectors and art thieves alike—are among the most frequently stolen in the world, with the Art Loss Register ranking the artist as the world’s most frequently stolen artist, with 1,147 missing works reported. 

As investigators continue their search, Still Life with Guitar joins a troubling catalogue of missing Picassos—reminders of both the artist’s enduring allure and the persistent vulnerability of cultural treasures in transit.