$4 MILLION LICHTENSTEIN PAINTING FOUND IN NEW YORK WAREHOUSE

A Roy Lichtenstein painting that has been missing since 1970 has been found in a New York warehouse. The 1961 painting, ‘Electric Cord,’ shows a coiled cord in black-and-white, and measures 28 by 18 inches. It was originally bought for just $750 by art collector, Leo Castelli in the 1960s. However, the painting went missing after the Castelli gallery sent it out to be cleaned.

Leo Castelli died in 1999, and his wife, Barbara listed the work as ‘missing or stolen’ in 2007. However, the painting resurfaced at a storage facility on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, having been shipped from a gallery in Bogota, Colombia. Attorneys for Castelli say that the painting is currently worth $4 million, while New York State Judge, Peter Sherwood, issued  a temporary restraining order, preventing the painting from being moved from the warehouse.

Lichtenstein was a pioneer in pop art who died at age 73 in 1997. In May, one of Lichtenstein’s works, titled ‘Sleeping Girl,’ sold at the Sotheby’s auction house for $44.8 million.