Painting found in garage may be worth $10 million

Jackson Pollock spent nearly all of his youth in Arizona and California.

He even left a tiny bit of himself in Phoenix, close to what is now Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

The 20th-century artist, internationally known for abstract, splatter and “drip” paintings, became a sensation in the New York art world from the 1940s until his death in 1956.

So how is it that one of Pollock’s paintings might have found its way into a Sun City garage?

Josh Levine, owner and founder of J. Levine Auction & Appraisal LLC, said that he received a phone call from a Sun City resident, whose name is not being released, asking his firm to look at Los Angeles Lakers memorabilia that was signed by longtime basketball star Kobe Bryant.

What the firm found in addition seemed to be a proverbial treasure chest of 20th-century modern art, including works that appear to have been created by Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Cora Kelley Ward and Pollock.

Did he have a Pollock in hand? The possibility captured Levine’s interest.

Knowing how common fraud is in the art world, he says he spent more than $50,000 on forensics reports and private investigators to trace the lineage of the piece.

Levine walked through the connection from Pollock to the Sun City homeowner, who Levine said was a patient at an assisted-living facility and was being represented by a person with power of attorney over his estate.

“As we went through the pieces, we saw that every single one of these artists were from the same social circle as Clement Greenberg,” Levine said of the garage treasure trove.

Greenberg was a wellknown American modernart critic and essayist in New York in the mid-20th century.

“If he said you were great, then you were great,” Levine said.

Greenberg also is known as an early promoter of Pollock’s work.

Levine said the paintings were bequeathed to the Sun City homeowner by his sister, Jenifer Gordon, a close friend of Greenberg and Peggy Guggenheim — an art collector and socialite who was also important in promoting Pollock’s work.

Barbara McKay, an Australian artist who was friends with Gordon and Greenberg and lived in New York in the early 1980s, said she knew Gordon had received a Pollock sometime during her life.

“I knew that Jenifer had a Pollock, and, as confident as I could be, given that photographs are never as clear as seeing the painting in the flesh, that this is the original painting,” McKay said in an email to The Arizona Republic.

The forensics report, done by Peter Paul Biro, said the paint on the alleged Pollock contained no pigments or binding introduced after Pollock’s death.

This revelation, combined with information provided by private investigators Levine hired, left no doubt in Levine’s mind that he was in possession of the real deal.

“I’m brave enough to call it a Jackson Pollock and put my entire reputation on it,” Levine said.

The Noland that Levine found is titled “Replace!” and sold for $110,000 in early 2016.

Levine, who is auctioning the Pollock piece at his auction house in Scottsdale on June 20, expects it to sell for at least $10 million.

“The owner of the painting had no idea what he had. He said to me, ‘I didn’t even know who he (Pollock) was until you told me about him,’ ” Levine said.

“It just doesn’t get any better than that. I’m almost sad that these past 18 months of research are going to be over,” Levine added.