In 1961, art dealer Leo Castelli bought a painting by Roy Lichtenstein for $750. One of the founding fathers of Pop Art, this particular piece was one of Lichtenstein’s first. In 1970, when Castelli sent the painting to be cleaned by art restorer, Daniel Goldreyer, he didn’t know it would be the last anyone would see of the work for a long time.
Goldreyer soon contacted Castelli to tell him that Electric Chord had gone missing from his office. Efforts to locate the painting went on for decades. The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation even put an image of the work on its holiday greeting card in 2006 to remind people of the ongoing search. This past July, Electric Chord turned up in a storage facility in New York. Goldreyer’s widow had found the painting in a locker belonging to a former employee after her husband’s death in 2009. Ms. Goldreyer tried to sell the painting to Quinta Galeria in Colombia using an assumed name. She claimed she was selling it on behalf of a friend. The gallery decided to send the work back to New York.
Leo Castelli’s widow, Barbara, picked up Electric Chord on Tuesday, October 16th. Valued at $4 million, she plans to hang the painting in her home.
