Painting found in trash sells for $1 million

NEW YORK: A painting found in a pile of trash on a New York street sold at Sotheby's auction house late on Tuesday for a million dollars, nearly 20 years after it was stolen from a warehouse in Texas.

'Tres personajes' ('Three People') a 1970 work by Rufino Tamayo, one of Mexico's best known artists, was bagged by a telephone bidder for $1.049,000.

It had been saved from the garbage by Elizabeth Gibson, who spotted the work while out walking one morning in 2003. 

"It was a Saturday morning. I went out for a coffee at 7:00 am. I saw it on the sidewalk among black plastic garbage bags," she said ahead of the sale.

"I passed my way and had my coffee, but a voice inside kept telling me to go back and take the painting. So I stopped reading my book and I went back and took the painting, which had a very bad frame but was in perfect condition."

The work, with bold strokes of red, purple and yellow, was bought by a Texas couple in 1977 who put it in storage while they moved house.

They noticed the painting was missing in 1987 when picking up their belongings at the warehouse. 

Where the painting went for the next 16 years remains a mystery, but for several months after discovering it, Gibson kept it on the wall in her apartment.   

Tipped off by a friend that the painting could be valuable, Gibson started investigating only to find on the Internet that the work had been featured on US television show 'The Antiques Roadshow' in a segment on missing paintings. 

Gibson approached Sotheby's, which helped return the painting to its original owner, who remains unidentified. 

Federal FBI detectives are still investigating the case.   

The painting carried a pre-sale estimate of $750,000 to one million. Gibson has already received a 15,000-dollar reward for helping secure its return and was to receive an undisclosed sum from the sale.   

The sale came amid a week of Latin American art auctions in New York expected to fetch around 50 million dollars and as the city's first contemporary Latin American art fair wrapped up after selling some 300 works. 

The city's Museum of Modern Art is also due this week to unveil an exhibition of its most recent Latin American acquisitions.