A woman found a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe that had remained lost for around 40 years. The discovery took place in the apartment of her aunt, a former Foreign Service officer who lived in New York’s East Village and had kept the work out of sight of relatives and visitors for decades.
The niece, identified as Betsy, was going through her aunt’s belongings while the family prepared for her admission to hospice care. The painting was inside its original box, in a hallway closet, hidden behind a row of fur coats. Although the elderly woman had mentioned in 2022 that she kept an O’Keeffe work in that spot, Betsy was unable to see it until weeks before her aunt’s death, at the age of 98.
The Georgia O’Keeffe work that remained hidden for 40 years will be auctioned
After the discovery, the owner’s family decided to put Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I, the Georgia O’Keeffe work that had been stored away since the mid-1980s, up for sale. The painting will be one of the lots in Christie’s evening sale of 20th-century art in New York. The auction house set an estimate of between USD 3 million and USD 5 million for the work. According to CBS News, the piece will be displayed free of charge at the auction house’s headquarters in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center before the sale takes place.
The painting was created in 1930, a year after O’s first trip…
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The Christie's auction house will sell the work Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I with an estimate of between USD 3 million and USD 5 million (Christie's)A woman found a painting by Georgia O'Keeffe that had been lost for around 40 years. The discovery took place in her aunt's apartment; the aunt was a former Foreign Service officer who lived in New York's East Village and had kept the work out of sight of family members and visitors for decades. The niece, identified as Betsy, was going through her belongings as the family prepared for her entry into palliative care. The painting was inside its original box, in a hallway closet and hidden behind a row of fur coats. Although the elderly woman had mentioned in 2022 that she kept an O'Keeffe work in that spot, Betsy was unable to see it until weeks before her aunt's death, at age 98. O'Keeffe painted the work in 1930 as the first of a series of three pieces dedicated to the landscape of Pedernal Peak (www.georgiaokeeffe.org)After the discovery, the owner's family decided to put Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I, the Georgia O'Keeffe work that had been stored away since the mid-1980s, up for sale. The painting will be one of the lots in Christie's 20th-century evening art sale in New York. The auction house set an estimate of between USD 3 million and USD 5 million for the work. According to CBS News, the piece will be exhibited free of charge at the auction house's headquarters in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center before the sale takes place. Betsy located the Georgia O'Keeffe painting in a closet in her aunt's apartment in New York's East Village (Christie's)The painting was created in 1930, one year after O'Keeffe's first trip to New Mexico. It depicts a landscape of earthy tones and undulating forms, associated with Pedernal Peak, near Abiquiú. Christie's considers it the first of a series of three works on that same site: another belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the third is part of a private collection. The piece measures 25 by 60 centimeters and anticipates the landscapes and abstractions the artist developed during the following decades in the American Southwest. O'Keeffe spent her last 40 years in that state, where she consolidated a central part of her artistic output. The painting will be exhibited free of charge at Manhattan's Rockefeller Center before the evening art sale (Christie's)Before its recovery, the work was only known from a photograph taken in 1931 by Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer and husband of the artist. The painting was listed as "unlocated" in O'Keeffe's catalogue raisonné, according to Christie's international director of American Art, Tylee Abbott. The identification was supported by analysis of the painting, comparison of its brushstrokes with other works by the artist, the historical photograph, and documentation of the original purchase. The owner's mother had acquired the piece on April 15, 1963, at The Downtown Gallery in Manhattan, which represented O'Keeffe, for USD 3,800. The piece was listed as unlocated in the catalogue raisonné and was only known from a 1931 photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz (Christie's)Abbott told CBS News that the work reflects the impact New Mexico had on the painter from her earliest visits. "It represents the starting point of her inspiration at that time," the specialist said of a landscape the artist would return to in various forms throughout her career. Betsy, the niece who found the painting, told the New York Post that the family will donate part of the money to an educational institution and divide the rest among the heirs. "Once we started exploring the value of the piece, I realized it's worth more than my house," she said. The back of the work contains O'Keeffe's signature with star-shaped strokes and inscriptions by Alfred Stieglitz (Christie's)The recovered painting bears Georgia O'Keeffe's characteristic signature on the back, identified by its star-shaped strokes. According to Betsy's account to the New York Post, the back also bore inscriptions associated with Alfred Stieglitz, the artist's husband and one of the leading American photographers of the 20th century. The box that came with the work still had a label from The Downtown Gallery, the New York space that represented O'Keeffe. That element made it possible to reconstruct part of the piece's provenance and link it to the commercial circuit in which the artist moved. Christie's noted that the work remained in good condition. Tylee Abbott, the house's international director of American Art, pointed out that the rediscovery was significant because it was a piece that was "exquisitely executed and well preserved."