Tamayo painting found in dumpster sells for more than $1M

CBC News

Call it a triumph for the Trashcan School of modern art. A painting pulled out of a Manhattan dumpster by a passerby has sold for more than $1 million US at auction. Tres Personajes, by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo, was stolen in 1987 and later left in the garbage in New York City. Tres Personajes, by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo, was stolen in 1987 and later left in the garbage in New York City.
 
The abstract work, Tres Personajes, by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo, sold for $1,049,000 US to an unidentified U.S. collector Tuesday evening at a Sotheby's auction in New York.

Manhattan writer Elizabeth Gibson found the painting in 2003 on her morning walk, and it took her nearly four years of sleuthing to find out who the work really belonged to.

Something about the painting pulled her in, Gibson told CBC News last month, acknowledging she's not much of a fan of modern art.

"It is huge and it's very brilliant-coloured, very abstract, but you can make out three figures and it's just very powerful, it's overwhelming," she said.

Through research in the library and an episode of Antiques Road Show, she learned the painting had been stolen in 1987 from a Texas warehouse. She contacted Sotheby's auction house, who located the owners.

The widow of the Houston man who originally bought the painting, created in 1970 by Tamayo, decided to sell the work.

Gibson received a $15,000 US reward for turning in Tres Personajes and also will get a percentage of the sale price.

Tamayo, who was born in 1899 in the Mexican state of Oaxaca and who died in 1991, often painted with the vivid colours of his homeland, like the reds and yellows of Tres Personajes.

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