Spanish police investigate as Picasso painting vanishes on way to exhibition

Still Life with Guitar, worth €600,000, noticed missing after van arrives in Granada from Madrid

Police in Spain are investigating the disappearance of a tiny Picasso painting, worth €600,000 (£520,000), which vanished en route from Madrid to an exhibition in the southern city of Granada.

The gouache and pencil work, Naturaleza muerta con guitarra (Still Life with Guitar), was due to go on show at a new exhibition at the CajaGranada foundation, which opened last week.

But the picture, which was painted in 1919 and measures 12.7cm x 9.8cm, never made it to the foundation’s Still Life: the Eternity of the Inert exhibition.

The painting belongs to a private collector in the Spanish capital and had been expected as part of a consignment of loaned exhibits that arrived by van from Madrid on Friday 3 October.