Photo: Christie’s Images Ltd. 2025.
Eva Hesse, “Landscape Forms” (1959).
If you found a painting you loved in some cheap second-hand shop, what would you do with it? Even if it turned out to be valuable? I think if I bought it because I loved it, I’d want it on my walls. Everything in the world is not valued only in terms of gold.
In April, Laurie Gwen Shapiro reported at Hyperallergic about a brother-sister team who are in it for the gold.
“One afternoon last fall, 55-year-old Kara Spellman was working from her Upper East Side apartment when her phone pinged. Her big brother Glenn, 58, a longtime licensed appraiser and self-described ‘picker,’ who lives in the same building, had texted a photo and a short message: ‘Take a look at this.’
“The image was of a small abstract painting — 30 by 24 inches — titled ‘Landscape Forms’ and newly listed on ShopGoodwill.com, the online auction wing of the national thrift store chain. The brushwork was gestural, the color palette felt just right, and in the lower-right corner, a signature: E.H.
“Glenn had a hunch. Kara, director of Estates and Acquisitions at Hollis Taggart Gallery in Chelsea, had a stronger one.
“ ‘We both have a good eye,’ she told Hyperallergic, laughing. ‘The brushwork looked too specific to be a copy.’
“But instinct wasn’t enough. The siblings, who’ve teamed up before on treasure hunts, needed the catalogue raisonné — the official compendium of an artist’s authenticated work.
“Kara emailed the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and begged them to pull the volume by the end of the day. Miraculously, someone she knew replied right away: They’d do it. She jumped in a cab.
“ ‘There it was,’ she said. ‘Landscape Forms’ (1959). Signed. Documented. And officially marked: ‘Whereabouts Unknown.’
“The only visual in the book was an off-color image made from an unmarked slide in the artist’s papers at Oberlin College’s Allen Memorial Art Museum. In fact, as noted in the catalogue raisonné, it’s ‘one of 15 paintings known only by unmarked slides’ included in that archive. But it matched exactly. And it was lost for decades until it popped up at a Goodwill warehouse in Frederick, Maryland.
“The Jewish artist Eva Hesse, born in Hamburg in 1936, escaped the Nazis as a child via the Kindertransport to London with her sister. Their desperate parents followed soon after, and the family eventually resettled in New York. Hesse would go on to become one of the most influential figures of the postwar American avant-garde. Best known for her radical, impermanent sculptural work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and cheesecloth, she died in 1970, at just 34. Fragile and emotionally charged, her most important pieces helped define Post-Minimalism and, though rarely offered at auction, have sold for millions. Most are held in the collections of major museums.
“But before all that, Hesse painted. ‘Landscape Forms,’ made while she was an MFA student at Yale under Josef Albers — who affectionately called her ‘my little colorist’— is part of that rare early body of work. …
“And then one day, it was gone. Was it lost? Stolen? A gift quietly passed along, then forgotten?
“ ‘I’m not an artist,’ Glenn said in a phone call late at night after a grueling 10-hour day looking at estates. ‘I’m a treasure hunter. A detective.’ …
“ ‘Once or twice a year, something outstanding shows up there,’ he said of ShopGoodwill. ‘You just have to know what you’re looking at.’ …
“For bigger finds, Glenn often partners with Hollis Taggart, his former boss and longtime friend. They agreed it was worth pursuing together. After winning the lot for $40,000 — not exactly a steal, but Hesse’s auction record is above $4 million — Glenn drove to Frederick, Maryland, himself. …
“Back in New York, Glenn brought the painting to Hollis Taggart Gallery. There, it underwent conservation: surface cleaning, minor restoration, and re-stretching.
“It was shown at two major art fairs, including the Armory Show last September. There was interest — almost a sale — but no one bit. …
“Now, after regrouping, ‘Landscape Forms’ is headed to Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale in May, with an estimate of $60,000–$80,000. [Update: It sold for $107,100.]
“The Spellman siblings, Gen Xers who’ve been in New York for decades, grew up in Ballston Spa, near Saratoga Springs, and got their start as bottle diggers.
“ ‘There was an old slaughterhouse near the creek bed,’ Glenn recalled. ‘We’d find colored, hand-blown bottles and sell them downtown, because there was also a one-cent candy store in town. If we sold an old bottle for a quarter, we’d get 25 pieces of candy. A home run would be a dollar bottle, which equaled 100 pieces of candy!’ …
“Both are longtime fans of American Pickers (2010–), the History Channel’s reality TV series whose hosts travel across the country in search of valuable artifacts. ‘I still watch it religiously,’ Glenn added. ‘You pick up more than you’d think.’
“When asked how it felt to hold the Hesse in his hands for the first time, Glenn got quiet.
“ ‘It was very exciting,’ he said. ‘You get the thrill when you win it, but when you finally handle it, when you know it’s real, that’s the magic.’ ”
More at Hyperallergic, here. No paywall, but your donation helps keep great art coverage going.
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