{"id":366622,"date":"2026-10-07T06:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T06:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/366622\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T06:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T06:20:10","slug":"in-2003-a-new-york-woman-pulled-a-painting-from-trash-on-manhattans-upper-west-side-four-years-later-she-learned-it-was-a-stolen-rufino-tamayo-work-and-sothebys-sold-it-for-1049","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/366622\/","title":{"rendered":"In 2003, a New York woman pulled a painting from trash on Manhattan\u2019s Upper West Side; four years later she learned it was a stolen Rufino Tamayo work, and Sotheby\u2019s sold it for $1,049,000"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"In“Tres Personajes” by Mexican artist Rufi In 2003, Elizabeth Gibson was taking a morning walk on Manhattan\u2019s Upper West Side when she noticed a brightly coloured abstract painting lying in the trash. She did not know who had painted it or why it had been thrown away. Still, something about the work made her stop and take it with her.Gibson later began looking into the painting she had found. Her search eventually led her to the website of \u201cAntiques Roadshow FYI\u201d, a companion programme to the PBS show \u201cAntiques Roadshow\u201d, CBC news reported. That was when she discovered that the painting was not an ordinary piece of discarded artwork.The painting was identified as \u201cTres Personajes\u201d (Three People), a 1970 work by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo. It had been bought by a Houston couple at Sotheby\u2019s in 1977 and was stolen from a warehouse in 1987 while the couple were moving.The discovery came four years after Gibson had found the painting. Sotheby\u2019s was preparing to sell the work at its Latin American Art auction on November 20, 2007. The auction house estimated that it could fetch up to $1 million.<\/p>\n

The 1987 stealing<\/p>\n

The Houston couple had bought \u201cTres Personajes\u201d at Sotheby\u2019s in 1977. The painting is an oil on canvas, with marble dust and sand worked into the paint. According to August Uribe, Sotheby\u2019s senior vice president of Impressionist and modern art, the husband had paid $55,000 for it as a gift for his wife.The painting was kept in a warehouse while the couple were moving. It was stolen from the warehouse in 1987. The couple then reported the theft to Houston and federal authorities.Information about the missing painting was also entered into databases maintained by the International Foundation for Art Research and the Art Loss Register. Despite those efforts, there were no credible leads about where the work had gone.The painting eventually turned up in a completely different setting. Gibson found it lying in rubbish on a street in Manhattan, apparently unaware that it was a valuable work that had been missing for years.For Gibson, the discovery was not simply about finding an unusual painting. She said she immediately felt that the artwork had some importance, even though she did not understand why.\u201cI would say it was an appointment with destiny,\u201d Gibson said in a telephone interview with the Los Angeles Times. \u201cI just knew it meant something. It was extremely powerful, and even though I didn\u2019t understand it. I knew it had power,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Discovering the identity<\/p>\n

Gibson’s search for information about the painting eventually connected her to \u201cAntiques Roadshow FYI\u201d. Uribe had featured \u201cTres Personajes\u201d on the programme\u2019s \u201cMissing Masterpieces\u201d segment.That helped Gibson realise that the painting she had taken from the rubbish was the same work that had been stolen from the Houston couple two decades earlier.By then, Tamayo’s work had become highly valuable. Sotheby\u2019s described \u201cTres Personajes\u201d as an important work from the artist\u2019s mature period and prepared it for the upcoming auction.The original owner, whose husband had since died, was putting the painting up for sale. The couple had also offered a $15,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of the stolen work.Gibson was due to receive that $15,000 reward. She was also set to receive an undisclosed percentage of the eventual sale price.<\/p>\n

Rufino Tamayo and \u2018Tres Personajes\u2019<\/p>\n

Tamayo was born in 1899 in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. He studied at Mexico\u2019s School of Fine Arts and began his career with work that had similarities to the style of well-known Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera.His later work became more individual. It included vivid colours and expressions associated with Oaxaca, along with influences from pre-Columbian art.\u201cTres Personajes\u201d reflected this later period of his career. Sotheby\u2019s considered the 1970 painting an important example of Tamayo\u2019s mature work.Tamayo became internationally known during his lifetime. He received numerous prizes and exhibited his work in the United States, South America, Europe and Russia. He died in 1991, but his paintings continued to attract strong interest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Tres Personajes” by Mexican artist Rufi In 2003, Elizabeth Gibson was taking a morning walk on Manhattan\u2019s Upper…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[135720,75,84,83,9,135721,24,63,135718,25512,135719],"class_list":["post-366622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-art-theft","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-art-discovery","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-rufino-tamayo","tag-sothebys-auction","tag-tres-personajes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}