A purchase at a small town sale turned out to be a 'priceless' de Kooning painting stolen in 1985

It was a heist that was arsenic brazen arsenic it was simple.

On the greeting of Nov. 29, 1985, a mates entered The University of Arizona Museum of Art successful Tucson, Arizona. Within minutes, "Woman-Ochre" — a coating by the Dutch-American creator Willem de Kooning — was gone.

The museum's curator Olivia Miller described the theft successful a podcast interview connected The J. Paul Getty Museum's website:

"The gathering was conscionable starting to unfastened up for the day. There was a antheral and pistillate sitting extracurricular successful the courtyard, and a unit subordinate entered the building, and they came successful down them.

The information guards are not yet each taken their positions successful the building. The antheral proceeded upstairs to the 2nd floor, and the information defender began upstairs to spell instrumentality her presumption up there. But the pistillate stopped her to speech to her astir the coating that hangs successful the stairwell. We present cognize that that was intelligibly a method to distract her and forestall her from going upstairs.

About 5 to 10 minutes later, the antheral came backmost down and the mates near the museum. The information defender continued upstairs, walked done the galleries and that's erstwhile she realized that 'Woman-Ochre' had been chopped from its frame."

The thieves near nary fingerprints, and the depository didn't person a camera strategy astatine the time, Miller told CNBC.  

The coating would stay missing for 32 years.

In 2017, David Van Auker, the co-owner of a furnishings and antiques store successful Silver City, New Mexico, paid $2,000 for a postulation of items an property merchantability astatine a location successful a tiny municipality extracurricular of the city.

The location belonged to Jerry and Rita Alter, some erstwhile nationalist schoolhouse employees. Jerry was a "Sunday painter" — oregon hobbyist — and the mates were known to beryllium adventurous ("they traveled to similar 120 countries"), said Miller.   

Among Van Auker's acquisition was a painting that hung down the couple's chamber door, helium told CNBC.

Van Auker enactment the coating successful his store, wherever customers instantly started to inquire astir it, helium said. But it wasn't until a lawsuit offered $200,000 for it that helium and his co-owners decided to investigate, helium said.

"The lawsuit thought it mightiness beryllium worthy acold much and wanted to wage america reasonably for it," Van Auker told CNBC. "We searched Google [and] … recovered an nonfiction astir the theft."

Miller was talking to a workfellow successful her bureau erstwhile she heard a unusual speech implicit the museum's information radio. A information defender said determination was a antheral connected the telephone who claimed to person the museum's stolen painting.  

"My coworker and I conscionable stopped our speech and looked astatine each other," said Miller. "She said, 'Are we going to retrieve this infinitesimal for the remainder of our lives?'"

Still, Miller said the infinitesimal wasn't 1 of "instant excitement." She said that portion the antheral connected the telephone — which turned retired to beryllium Van Auker — sounded precise genuine, she was acrophobic helium could person a reproduction of immoderate kind. So she asked him for photos, she said.

"Every clip helium sent a photo, we were getting much and much excited," she said. "He said that the coating had lines crossed it arsenic if it had been rolled up."

Another showed the edges of the painting, which were uneven and "corresponded to the edges that we had that remained behind."

That's erstwhile the FBI got involved, instructing Van Auker to rapidly region it from his store, said Miller. She said helium stored it astatine a friend's location until the depository could prime it up.

When the coating arrived astatine the Getty, it was successful "very mediocre condition," said Laura Rivers, subordinate paintings conservator for the J. Paul Getty Museum.

It had horizontal cracking crossed the surface, and microscopic fragments of overgarment were scattered crossed the surface, caught betwixt an aboriginal furniture of varnish and a 2nd furniture applied aft the theft, she said.

Plus, the look of the coating had been stapled onto a caller strainer, oregon woody enactment system, and it appeared to person been rolled up — look successful — which is mostly worse than rolling a coating look out, said Rivers.

Still, astir of the harm is believed to person been done erstwhile the thief peeled the canvas distant from its wax lining, she said. Miller told CNBC the lining was added successful 1974 by the Museum of Modern Art to reenforce the coating aft it was damaged during transit astatine the time.

"When the thief began to chopped the canvas distant from the frame, the weapon did not spell done some canvases," said Rivers. "It indispensable person been a somewhat confusing infinitesimal since the thief astir apt expected the coating to travel distant easily."

As demonstrated successful a video connected Getty's website, Ulrich Birkmaier, the Getty's elder conservator, reattached the edges to the archetypal canvas and filled successful immoderate of the mislaid paint, a process called "inpainting," Rivers said.

In all, the conservation task took astir 3 years, though immoderate of this was owed to pandemic-related delays, she said.

After a abbreviated accumulation astatine the Getty Center, "Woman-Ochre" is headed backmost to the University of Arizona Museum of Art, wherever it volition unfastened to the nationalist via a peculiar accumulation starting Oct. 8.

"Once that accumulation is implicit successful May, it volition so determination backmost up to the precise partition it was stolen from, wherever it volition enactment for many, galore years to come," said Miller.

Miller said the depository isn't attaching a dollar worth to the enactment owed to heightened attraction astir its return, but successful presumption of taste and acquisition value, Miller said "we see it priceless."

The communicative of "Woman-Ochre" has present been made into a movie. Miller said the filmmakers did a "great job" and that she was "especially impressed with however galore interviews they secured, including … radical who knew Jerry and Rita personally."

The FBI lawsuit into who stole the coating remains open, she said.