Because she admired the artwork, but because she wanted to reuse its canvas for one of her own paintings featuring cats, beth Feeback paid just $9.99 for a large painting in 2012, not.
Months later, a friend’s suggestion to check the markings on the back changed the fate of the seemingly ordinary thrift-store find, according to a report by ABC News. A North Carolina artist once walked into a Goodwill store looking for inexpensive material for her own artwork and walked out with what would turn out to be a valuable piece of American abstraction.
It was subsequently authenticated and offered at Sotheby’s in New York, where it sold for about $27,000 at auction. With the buyer’s premium included, Sotheby’s listed the final price as $34,375. Contemporary reports said Sotheby’s estimated that the painting could sell for between $15,000 and $20,000. That estimate was already dramatically higher than the $9.99 Feeback had paid, but the final result went beyond it. When the painting went under the hammer in September 2012, Feeback watched the auction remotely with family and friends. Instead, the Bolotowsky painting attracted a successful bid of roughly $27,000. Ilya Bolotowsky was born in St Petersburg, Russia, in 1907 and died in New York in 1981. He immigrated to the United States in 1923 and studied at the National Academy of Design. Contemporary accounts said museum records indicated that Burlington Industries had loaned the painting to the Weatherspoon for an exhibition in 1979. At Goodwill, it was simply a large canvas she could buy for less than $10. Instead, a quick check of the label led to an artist, a title, an auction and a final reported price of $34,375 including the buyer’s premium.
Because some other works at the auction were selling below estimates or failing to find buyers, she had concerns that it might not sell at all, particularly. Had her friend’s warning come too late, the artwork might have been painted over and its identity lost.
The painting turned out to be “Vertical Diamond” by Ilya Bolotowsky, a Russian-born American abstract artist whose work is held by major museums. The painting was identified as “Vertical Diamond,” a geometric abstract work. That small piece of advice proved crucial. Feeback discovered the name Ilya Bolotowsky associated with the work and began researching the artist. Rather than covering it with cat portraits, she decided to have it examined and pursue a sale. The artist behind the thrift-store discovery had a significant place in the history of American abstraction. The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art describes him as a Russian-American abstract painter. Bolotowsky became closely associated with geometric abstraction and was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists, an organisation formed to promote abstract art in the United States. His work was strongly influenced by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian and the principles of geometric abstraction. Smithsonian American Art Museum The provenance of the painting also helped explain why such a significant work could eventually end up in a thrift store. Reports noted a Weatherspoon Art Museum sticker on the back, connecting the canvas to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s museum. For Feeback, however, none of that history was apparent when she first saw the painting.