• A €600,000 Picasso painting, which vanished en route from Madrid to an exhibition in Granada, has been recovered.
• The work, Still Life with Guitar (1919), never arrived with a van delivery on October 3 and the loss was only noticed days later.
• Spanish authorities said the painting likely did not make it onto the transport van.

A small Picasso painting, insured for €600,000 ($700,000), which vanished while traveling from Madrid to an exhibition in Granada, southern Spain, has been recovered, according to Spanish authorities.

The gouache and pencil piece, Still Life with Guitar (1919), was meant to join more than 50 works in a new exhibition at the Caja Granada Foundation, titled “Still Life: The Eternity of the Inert.” Owned by a private collector, the five-by-four inch painting playfully depicts the view from Picasso’s Parisian apartment and was acquired for €60,000 (then $76,000) from Paris’s Joron-Derem auction house in 2009, according to the Artnet Price Database. It was supposed to be delivered by van to the Caja Granada foundation on October 3 as part of a consignment of loaned exhibits. It never arrived.

Recuperado el #Picasso 🖼 desaparecido en su traslado a una exposición en #Granada

Podría no haber llegado a subir al camión de transporte

La Brigada de Patrimonio Histórico de @policia mantiene abierta la investigación una vez que agentes de Policía Científica han… pic.twitter.com/lb5jN8tFvI

— Policía Nacional (@policia) October 24, 2025

In a post on X noting its recovery, Spanish police said the painting “might not have made it onto the transport truck.” The Historical Heritage Brigade will keep the investigation open, it added, following forensic analysis of the work.

Discovering the Missing Picasso

When the transport van appeared at Caja Granada Foundation on the morning of Friday October 3, all of its contents were immediately moved to the freight elevator and then onto the exhibition floor. There, the exhibitions manager realized that the works were disorganized and that an exhaustive check would be impossible. “As not all packages were properly numbered,” the venue said in a statement on October 16. “It was not possible to carry out a thorough check without unpacking them.” Despite this, the delivery was signed off and the van and its crew returned to Madrid.

When staff returned on Monday morning and began unpacking the boxes, they realized Still Life with Guitar was missing. The foundation contacted the police and have since confirmed that a full review of security footage from the weekend has shown that no incident occurred during the period.

Pablo Picasso, Still Life With Guitar (c. 1919).

Although the investigation began with National Police from Madrid, the Granada theft unit took over, shifting the location of the theft to the country’s south. “We have also put ourselves at the disposal of those investigating,” the Caja Granada Foundation added. “We have complete faith that the case will be properly resolved.”

The foundation did not respond to a request to comment.

One noted anomaly was the journey that was taken by the logistics company. The drive from Madrid to Granada typically takes four to five hours, which is manageable within a single day. This delivery, however, was reported to have made an overnight stop in Deifontes, a town roughly 15 miles from its final destination. The crew was reported to have taken turns guarding the van’s cargo.

The Spanish police registered Still Life With Guitar in the Interpol’s global database of Stolen Works of Art, according to Reuters.

The high prices that Picasso works command have long made them a target of thieves. High profile Picasso thefts took place in 1976, 1989, and 2007. Last year, Belgian police recovered two Picasso paintings that had been stolen in 2010.

This story was originally published on October 17, 2025. It was updated on October 24, 2025, at 9.15 a.m. ET, to reflect the painting’s recovery.