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Fittingly enough for a still life, it would appear that the small Picasso painting that triggered a police investigation after apparently vanishing while en route from Madrid to Granada for an exhibition earlier this month scarcely moved from its pickup point.
Officers from Spain’s Policía Nacional 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.
Three weeks later, the lost painting – worth €600,000 (£525,000) – has been recovered after it was reportedly scooped up by a neighbour when the van’s crew left it behind.
Sources close to the investigation told Spain’s Efe news agency that the painting “never even left the building from which it was to be shipped for display in Granada”.
According to the sources, the transport company left the package in the doorway of a building in Madrid. It was then picked up by a neighbour who thought it was someone’s forgotten delivery and took it in for safekeeping. Days later, after her husband mentioned the missing Picasso, she checked the package and called the police.
Had the picture, which was painted by the Spanish artist in 1919, reached its destination, it would have been one of the stars of the foundation’s Still Life: the Eternity of the Inert exhibition. But it never did.
The foundation said that although some of the works were carefully packaged, they were not correctly numbered, making “an exhaustive check” impossible. The delivery was nonetheless signed off and the van and its crew went on their way.
The following Monday, the pieces, which had been under video surveillance all weekend, were unpacked.
“Once the unpacking had been done by the CajaGranada foundation’s own staff, the works were moved to different parts of the exhibition room,” the foundation said in a statement.
“Mid-morning that day, the exhibition’s curator and the foundation’s head of exhibitions noticed that one work was missing. The piece is a small gouache by Pablo Picasso, called Still Life with Guitar.”
The foundation reported the matter to the Policía Nacional, who began to investigate. A week of speculation over the painting’s fate came to a prosaic end on Friday, when the force announced that the work had been recovered.
“It may never have made it on the van,” the Policía Nacional said in a short statement. “The Historic Heritage Unit is keeping the investigation open and scientific police have opened the package containing the painting and are examining it.”
The Guardian understands 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.
Picasso’s fame – and the enormous sums his works command – have long made his art a target for thieves around the world.
In February 2007, two Picasso paintings worth €50m were stolen from the Paris home of the artist’s granddaughter. Two years later, a Picasso sketchbook worth more than €8m was stolen from a Paris museum dedicated to the artist.
Twelve Picasso paintings, valued at about £9m, were stolen from the French Riviera villa of another of his grandchildren, Marina Picasso, in 1989.
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’s largest art thefts.
