Priceless de Kooning painting is recovered 31 years after being ripped from University of Arizona gallery New Mexico antique-store owner says he bought it as part of estate sale; preliminary authentication is complete, UA says.

Anne Ryman | The Republic | azcentral.com

Show Caption Hide Caption Stolen painting found 31 years later Meg Hagyard, interim director of the University of Arizona Museum of Art, and Olivia Miller, curator of exhibitions, are thrilled that a valuable painting that was stolen from the museum in 1985 has been recovered. Tom Tingle/azcentral.com

The abstract painting of a nude woman rested inside an antiques shop in Silver City, New Mexico.

The shop owner had picked it up in an estate sale and intended to hang it in his guesthouse. He kept it at the store, just for the day.

But visitors noticed.

"Is that a real de Kooning?" one man asked.

Three others had the same question.

The owner, David Van Auker, tapped "de Kooning" into his internet browser. Up popped an azcentral.com article that led him to report the discovery of the artwork to authorities.

Preliminary authentication shows the painting is “Woman-Ochre,” a Willem de Kooning masterpiece looted in a daring heist 31 years ago from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson, museum officials said this week.

A similar painting by de Kooning in the same series sold for $137.5 million a decade ago.

UA officials brought the painting back to Tucson on Aug. 7. The FBI has an "active and ongoing investigation," said Glenn Milnor, a spokesman for the FBI Phoenix Field Office. The FBI declined further comment.

Hanging behind a door

Van Auker told The Arizona Republic in an exclusive interview that he visits estate sales for Manzanita Ridge Furniture & Antiques, a store he co-owns owns in Silver City with Buck Burns and Rick Johnson.

He said he recently received a call from a man who was handling a relative's estate in a small town about 30 minutes from Silver City. He declined to disclose the estate’s address to The Republic.

After an inspection, Van Auker bought the contents of the ranch-style home. The lot included African art, midcentury modern furniture, pottery and a couple of paintings.

The 30- by 40-inch canvas was hanging behind a door in the master bedroom. Van Auker said he didn’t recognize the work as that of the famous Dutch-American abstract expressionist.

"I just thought it was a cool painting," he said.

Burns also liked the painting's rich, thick paint strokes. He liked everything except for its "horrible" gold frame. But frames can be changed, so they loaded it into a truck on top of other artifacts from the home and hauled it to their store in Silver City.

They placed the painting on the floor, leaning it against a coffee table in the store. They next day, the store was open for no more than 20 minutes when the painting started attracting attention.

UA police chief relives 1985 theft of de Kooning painting University of Arizona Chief of Police Brian Seastone was assigned to cover the case in 1985 when a man and woman walked into the University of Arizona Museum of Art and walked out with "Woman-Ochre," a priceless painting. Tom Tingle/azcentral.com

A copy — or real?

After his initial internet research, Van Auker said he thought the painting was a copy by someone inspired by de Kooning's work.

Then he discovered a 2015 article on azcentral.com about a de Kooning painting that had been stolen from the UA museum in 1985 without a trace.

He said the online photo of “Woman-Ochre” matched the painting in his store.

The more research he did, the more convinced Van Auker became that he may have inadvertently purchased a stolen painting.

Van Auker could see "swoops" in the canvas, where the painting had been cut from a frame.

He also could see horizontal cracks consistent with the painting being rolled up. Police believe the thief snuck the painting out of the UA museum by rolling up the canvas and stuffing it under his jacket.

Van Auker got a sinking feeling and was unsure what to do.

He called the UA museum, realizing that he probably sounded like a crazy person when he blurted out to the person answering the phone that he thought he had the stolen de Kooning painting in his shop.

"Hold, please," he was told and then connected with a museum official.

He called this reporter for The Republic, who had written the 2015 story, and the FBI.

The FBI was "very interested," and told him under no circumstances should he keep the painting in his store, Van Auker said. Find somewhere safe to put it, he said he was told.

He hid the painting behind the couch in his home and then later stored it with a friend while he waited for instruction on what to do next.

"I want the museum to have it back. I want no money," Van Auker said.

A signature series of paintings

Architect and businessman Edward Gallagher Jr. donated “Woman-Ochre” to the UA museum in 1958, when it was appraised at $6,000.

A world-class modern-art collector and frequent visitor to the state, Gallagher presented the university with the painting along with a number of other works in memory of his young son, who died at age 13.

At the time of the theft, the painting was valued at $400,000.

It's one of a series by de Kooning that feature the figure of a woman. The artist painted the series between 1950 and 1955, and they remain his best-known works in a career that spanned seven decades. De Kooning died in 1997.

The “Women” paintings shocked the art world because of their aggressive nature by an artist known for abstraction, according to de Kooning’s biography by the Willem de Kooning Foundation.

“Woman III” sold for $137.5 million in 2006. “Woman I” is displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Heist on the Friday after Thanksgiving

Museum staffers believe the thieves chose the day after Thanksgiving in 1985 to snatch the painting because the building would be quiet, with many workers off and few visitors.

A security guard unlocked the front door at 9 a.m., and a man and a woman entered.

The woman started chatting with the security guard. The man headed upstairs to the second floor.

The security guard became suspicious when they left after only 10 minutes — an unusually short time to spend perusing art. A quick search revealed the valuable de Kooning painting was gone.

Police believe the woman chatted to the guard to distract him so that the man, unobserved, could cut the painting out of its frame, possibly using a box cutter. He rolled up the painting and concealed it inside his blue winter jacket.

They fled in a rust-colored sports car.

Police found there wasn’t much of a crime scene. Museum staff were unable to get the car’s license plate. There was no video camera, no fingerprints detected.

Staffers were devastated.

“It was sheer, ‘How can this happen?’ There were a lot of tears shed that day,” said UA Police Chief Brian Seastone, who was a 27-year-old officer at the time and the case’s lead detective.

Seastone knew the chances of such a valuable painting remaining in the Tucson area were slim. He alerted the FBI and Interpol, the global network of police forces.

Law enforcement circulated a composite sketch of the thieves. One was described as a woman 55 to 60 years old, wearing a scarf and “granny” glasses. The man was described as 25 to 30 years old with curly hair, an olive complexion, thick mustache and glasses.

The woman, Seastone said, may have been a man in disguise.

Seastone said as many as 20 tips came in over the years, but none panned out.

Whenever the FBI recovered famous stolen paintings, Seastone would follow up to see if the de Kooning had been part of the lot.

“Is she in there?” he would ask.

On the 30th anniversary of the theft, in 2015, the university decided to draw attention again to the mystery in hopes the publicity would generate clues for the FBI's art-theft team.

The UA’s news release and story by staff writer Emily Litvack caught the attention of The Republic and several other media outlets, who researched and wrote their own stories about the case. The museum also mounted the empty frame that once held the painting in the gallery as a reminder.

The publicity strategy paid a dividend almost two years later.

Phone call from the finder

On Aug. 3, 2017, The Republic reporter who wrote the story got this voice message:

“Hi, Anne. My name is David Van Auker. I’m calling you from Silver City, New Mexico. This may be totally ridiculous and stupid but, um, I purchased a painting at an estate a couple of days ago and when I was doing some research on it I found your story on the U of A missing de Kooning painting, and it’s exactly the painting I have. I don’t know if that painting was ever copied or faked. Anyway, after reading your article I immediately called the U of A museum.”

Van Auker said he also called the FBI. Museum curator Olivia Miller asked him to email photographs and measurements. Each time another photo arrived over email, Miller got more and more excited.

A day later, a team from the UA, aided by law enforcement, were on their way to Silver City.

They brought the painting back to Tucson in a minivan, packed in a wooden crate that had recently been used, coincidentally, to transport a painting by abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, a de Kooning contemporary.

Nancy Odegaard, a conservator with the university, spent about two hours Aug. 9 comparing the recovered painting to notes kept on the original.

More than a dozen details match, including a tear on the side that had been repaired and patches on the back of the canvas.

“It’s obvious,” was her opinion on whether the painting is the original.

UA officials also plan to bring in an outside consultant who specializes in similar-style paintings for further authentication.

The university held a welcome home ceremony for the painting on Aug. 14 where officials honored the three antique store owners.

UA President Robert C. Robbins called them heroes for getting the painting back to the university.

"We are incredibly lucky, fortunate, thankful that the painting is being returned," Robbins said. "It’s going to be so important to our community and our students and researchers."

Lots of questions; few answers

The mystery is by no means solved.

How did “Woman-Ochre” end up in a tiny New Mexico town about 200 miles from Tucson?

Had the painting been at the house the entire time?

Who were the thieves? Are they still alive?

A few slim clues could help point to the answers. The painting was housed in a gold commercial frame. The canvas had been crudely stretched and stapled, also not consistent with a professional framing.

UA officials believe the painting had been reframed only once, a sign that the art hadn't passed through multiple owners.

'I always had this feeling that one day ...'

“Woman-Ochre” has been out of the university’s care for three decades and may need restoration work before the painting can be displayed in the museum, which has about 6,000 works.

Up to now, only a small circle of people have viewed the recovered artwork, and they said the experience has been surreal.

Three decades ago, Seastone, as a police officer, saw tears of despair after the painting was stolen.

This week, he witnessed tears of happiness.

“I always had this feeling that one day she would return home,” he said.

“And she has.”

Reach the reporter at 602-444-8072 or anne.ryman@arizonarepublic.com.

READ MORE:

UA to unveil stolen de Kooning painting to media on Monday

Unsolved mystery: de Kooning painting valued at $100 million missing for 30 years

The Republic's Willem de Kooning obituary from 1997

De Kooning painting fetches $66.3M in New York