Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Painting Found in Trash Worth $1 Million

This is a great little story about sheer luck and circumstance. I found it originally on AOL.com and you can click here to read the full version, but a recap goes something like this:

One March morning four years ago, Elizabeth Gibson was on her way to get coffee, when she spotted a large and colorful abstract canvas nestled between two big garbage bags in front of the Alexandria, an apartment building on the northwest corner of Broadway and 72nd Street in Manhattan.

“I had a real debate with myself,” said Ms. Gibson, a writer and self-professed Dumpster diver. “I almost left it there because it was so big, and I kept thinking to myself, ‘Why are you taking this back to your crammed apartment?’” But, she said, she felt she simply had to have the 38-by-51-inch painting, because “it had a strange power.”

Art experts would agree with her. As it turns out, the painting was “Three People,” a 1970 canvas by the celebrated 20th-century Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo that was stolen 20 years ago and is the subject of an F.B.I. Investigation.

Experts say the painting — a largely abstract depiction of a man, a woman and an androgynous figure in vibrant purples, oranges and yellows — is in miraculously good condition and worth about $1 million. Ms. Gibson returned the painting to it's original owner and will receive the promised $15,000 reward from the seller, as well as a smaller finder’s fee from Sotheby’s, which the auction house declined to disclose. On Nov. 20 it is to go on the block at Sotheby’s as one of the highlights of a Latin American art auction.


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