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A start-up gallery along Toronto’s beachfront, defying the global credit crisis, is asking $50 million for a disputed Jackson Pollock painting bought for $5 at a California thrift shop in 1992.
Teri Horton, a retired U.S. truck driver, bought the piece as a joke for a depressed friend before realizing it may be the work of one of America’s most famous artists. After failing to find a U.S. gallery or auction house willing to sell it, she hooked up with the Gallery Delisle in Toronto.
“This is a great chance for Canada”, gallery owner Michelle Delisle said. “There’s no question this is a Pollock. It’s a class thing – if Teri were a Harvard grad or a blue blood, the painting would have found its way into Sotheby’s or a museum already”.
The Pollock sale comes as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression spreads to art. In New York auctions this month at Sotheby’s and Christie’s International, as many as a third of works remained unsold, and prices fell short of estimates.
Christie’s, the biggest auction house, sold $113.6 million of contemporary works on Nov. 12, half its presale low estimate. Almost a third of 75 lots found no buyers in a room that included tennis player John McEnroe, actress Salma Hayek and billionaire Eli Broad. Among the rejects was a self-portrait by Francis Bacon that Christie’s had estimated would sell for about $40 million. (Bloomberg)
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