New Mexico antique-store owner says he bought it as part of estate sale; preliminary authentication is complete, UA says.

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 visitor asked.

A few more visitors made similar inquiries.

The owner, David Van Auker, began researching “de Kooning” on the internet.

He found an Arizona Republic article that led him to report the discovery of the artwork.

Officials said this week they have completed preliminary authentication on the painting known as “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.

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

UA officials have the painting back in their possession, and the FBI is investigating.

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

Hanging behind a door

Van Auker told The Republic in an exclusive interview that he visits estate sales for Manzanita Ridge, a store he owns in Silver City that specializes in used furniture and antiques.

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

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

The 30- by 40-inch canvas was hanging behind a door. 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.

He loaded it into a truck along with other artifacts from the home and hauled it to his store in Silver City.

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 said he couldn’t sleep at night once he realized what he might have.

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

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

He hid the painting with a friend. 

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 the third in a series of six paintings 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 when the trend at the time was 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 — Friday, Nov. 29, 1985 — to snatch the painting because the building would be quieter that day, with more workers away on vacation.

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

The woman started chatting with the security guard. The man headed right 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 stuffed the canvas 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 the global network of police forces called Interpol.

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 have come in over the years, but none has panned out.

The FBI had a special agent assigned to the case as part of the FBI’s art-crime team.

Whenever the FBI recovered famous stolen paintings, Seastone would follow up with them to see if the UA’s painting had been recovered as 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 Emily Litvack caught the attention of The Republic and several other media outlets, who researched and wrote their own online stories about the mystery.

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. They asked us to send pictures and things to them.”

Van Auker said he also called the FBI. He spoke to Olivia Miller, the museum’s curator, who asked him to email photographs and measurements. 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 to transport a painting by another famous artist, Jackson Pollock, who coincidentally also was an abstract expressionist.

Nancy Odegaard, a conservator with the university, spent about two hours this week comparing the recovered painting to written notes that were 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 was the original.

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

UA President Robert C. Robbins called Van Auker a “hero” for getting the painting back to the university. 

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

Lots of questions; few answers

The mystery of its whereabouts is by no means solved.

How did “Woman-Ochre” end up in a tiny New Mexico town only 225 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 possible 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 put on display.

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 [email protected].

READ MORE:

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

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