Art dealer scores big after storage locker purchase
New York — When an American art dealer dropped $15,000 on what he thought was "junk" in a New Jersey storage locker, he never imagined it could be the deal of a lifetime. But he now believes stashed in the unit were six paintings by Dutch-American abstract master Willem de Kooning, which could be worth millions of dollars. A De Kooning painting sold for $66.3m at Christie’s in 2016 in New York, while another sold privately for a reported $300m in 2015. Also found in the storage unit, says New York gallery owner David Killen, is a painting by Swiss modernist Paul Klee. The art originally came from the studio of Orrin Riley, a superstar in the art restoration business who died in 1986, leaving everything to his partner, Susanne Schnitzer, who was killed in a traffic accident in 2009. Her executors — friends in New Jersey — spent years trying to find rightful owners for the art, but no one came forward to claim the 200 pieces languishing in the storage unit, near the Ho-Ho-Kus township...
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