One afternoon last fall, Kara Spellman, 55, worked from her apartment Upper East Side when her phone scolded. His big brother Glenn, 58, a longtime approved assessor and a self-written “picker” who lives in the same building, had sent a photo and a short message: “Take a look at this.”
The image was of a small abstract painting – 30 by 24 inches – entitled “Landscape forms” and newly listed on Shopgoodwill.com, the online auction of the national thrift store. The brush was gesture, the color palette felt just, and in the lower corner on the right, a signature: eh
Glenn had an intuition. Kara, director of successions and acquisitions at the Hollis Taggart Gallery in Chelsea, had a stronger one.
“We both have a good eye,” she said Hyperalgiclaughing. “The brush seemed too specific to be a copy.”
But the instinct was not enough. The brothers and sisters, who joined forces with treasury hunts, needed the reasoned catalog – the official collection of the authenticated work of an artist.
Kara sent an email to the Watson library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and begged them to draw the volume by the end of the day. Miraculously, someone she knew responded immediately: they would. She jumped into a taxi.
“There it was,” she said. “Landscape forms” (1959). Sign. Documented. And officially marked: “Where are unknown.”
The only visual in the book was an off -color image made from an unmarked slide in the artist's papers at the Museum of Allen Memorial at Oberlin College. In fact, as indicated in the reasoned catalog, it is “one of the 15 paintings known only to unmarked slides” included in this archive. But that corresponded exactly. And he was lost for decades until he appeared in a goodwill warehouse in Frederick, Maryland.
The Jewish artist Eva Hesse, born in Hamburg in 1936, escaped the Nazis when he was a child via the Kindertransport in London with his sister. Their desperate parents followed shortly after and the family finally resettled in New York. Hesse would become one of the most influential figures of the post-war American avant-garde. Especially known for her radical and impermanent sculptural work in materials such as latex, fiberglass and stamens, she died in 1970, with only 34 years. Fragile and emotionally loaded, his most important pieces helped to define after minimalism and, although rarely offered at auction, have sold millions. Most take place in the collections of the main museums.
But above all that, Hesse painted. “Landscape forms,” said she was a student in MFA in Yale under Josef Albers – who affectionately called her “my little colorist” – is part of this rare early work.
In a Yale test of his year of graduation, Hesse wrote that the abstract expressionist “tries to define a deeply rooted link between him and nature”. This link goes directly through the brush: muddy tones, confident lines, a transitional spirit.
And then one day he left. Was it lost? Stolen? A gift has gone quietly, then forgotten?
“I am not an artist,” said Glenn in a phone call late at night after a 10 -hour exhausting day watching the domains. “I am a treasure hunter. A detective. “
He has been doing this kind of thing for decades – homemade calls, outputs out of radar, garage sales, back -room cleaners and, yes, parading obsessive via Shopgoodwill.com.
Now Glenn directs his own gallery at his leave, founded in 2016. He is a certified member of the Association of America assessors and works mainly by appointment.
“Once or twice a year, something remarkable appears there,” he said about Shopgoodwill. “You just have to know what you are looking at.”
With the confirmation of Kara du Met, the play was indeed “landscape forms”, listed in the official file, with the enigmatic “where are unknown”, “ He was in it.
For larger discoveries, Glenn often joins Hollis Taggart, his former longtime boss and friend. They agreed that it was worth continuing together. After winning the lot for $ 40,000 – not exactly a flight, but the Hesse auction record is above $ 4 million – Glenn led to Frederick, Maryland, himself. Eight round trip.
“I have already had pieces in transit,” he said. “This one, I did not take risks.”
Back in New York, Glenn brought the painting to the Hollis Taggart gallery. There, he suffered a conservation: surface cleaning, minor and re-extent catering.
It was shown in two major art fairs, including the show of Armory last September. There was an interest – almost a sale – but no one.
“People always associate Hesse with her sculpture,” said Kara. “But it's a beautiful early piece, and that throws people. Everyone does not know that she painted before the sculpture. If I had the money, I would buy it.”
Now, after the regrouping, the “landscape forms” are headed for Sale of the post-war and contemporary art day of Christie In May, with an estimate of $ 60,000 to $ 80,000. Several experts who spoke to Hyperalgic Believe it could go much higher. After all, other Hesse paintings have recovered six figures, and it has the kind of auction houses of rocks.
Not all the “lost hesitates” prove to be one. When Bravinlee's recent opening Gold threada recurring Textile art show and fiber In the Manhattan Seaport district, co-commissioner John Post Lee recalled a moment in the early 2000s, when his gallery (with his partner Karin Bravin) was at 526 West 26th. One day, he spotted a dusty painting supported against the wall of the basement of the building.
It seemed suspected Hesse-ish. For about five minutes, he thought he had struck gold.
“I removed one-mute palette, expressive brush, the initials: and I thought, Jesus, perhaps,” he said.
He brought Barry Rosen, his friend and long -standing supervisor from Domaine Hesse. Rosen took a look and gave a subtle head kit: not a hesitic.
“And that was it,” said Lee. “Was it a young artist channeling her?” You think you're Joan Mitchell. You think you are Eva Hesse. “
The painting returned to the heap. No provenance. No Christie estimate.
The brothers and sisters Spellman, Gen Xers who have been in New York for decades, have grown up in Balston Spa, near Saratoga Springs, and have made their debut as Diggers of bottles.
“There was an old slaughterhouse near the stream bed,” recalls Glenn. “We would find colored and souffled bottles by hand and sell them in the city center, because there was also a candy store one penny in town. If we sold an old bottle for a quarter, we would get 25 candies. A Home Run would be a bottle in dollars, which equaled 100 pieces of candy! ”
They have been working on discoveries for years now. “My brother is a license merchant – but you can simply say that he is the selector,” said Kara. “I am the researcher with books.”
Both are longtime fans of American pickers (2010–), History Channel's reality TV series whose hosts travel across the country looking for precious artifacts. “I always look at him religiously,” added Glenn. “You take more than you think.”
When asked how it was to hold the Hesse in his hands for the first time, Glenn was silent.
“It was very exciting,” he said. “You get the thrill when you win it, but when you finally manage it, when you know it's real, it's magic.”
