What's in Your Trash?

One Saturday morning in 2003, Elizabeth Gibson walked out of her apartment at 72nd and Broadway in Manhattan, bought a cup of coffee, and on her return, dug a large abstract canvas out of the trash. Turns out it is a painting by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo that was stolen from a Houston warehouse two decades ago. No joke. Gibson realized what she had hanging in her living room after some research that led her to the cover of a monograph on which the painting was featured and an episode of PBS' "Antiques Roadshow" on which Sotheby's August Uribe talked about the piece. Carol Vogel has the story for the New York Times here, and Lindsay Pollock for Bloomberg here.

The unidentified owner of the piece, titled Tres Personajes (Three People), is selling it at Sotheby's on November 20th for an estimated $750,000 - $1 million. It's a terrible thing that the owner went without her painting, a gift from her husband, for 20 years. But looking on the bright side, its estimated value has increased by a factor of 10 since then — her husband bought it for $55,000 at Sotheby's in 1977 — and the dramatic history of the work could generate enough buzz to drive the hammer price even higher. It's got built-in PR.

Gibson has made out pretty well, too, with a $15,000 reward from the owner and an undisclosed sum from Sotheby's for recovering the painting.

What I really want to know is what kind of thief kicked a Tamayo to the curb, literally, after getting off scot free for so long? Did the nerves finally kick in? Did the thief die and some unassuming person chuck out the contents of his/her apartment? It'll be interesting to see if the FBI is able to piece anything together.

Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. No doubt, Teri Horton and Alex Matter are irritated.