New York Gallery Sues To Recover Warhol
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
An art gallery has sued the Christie’s auction house and a man in an effort to recover a $100,000 Andy Warhol painting that the gallery reported stolen nearly 10 years ago.
Martin Lawrence Galleries says in court papers that the 1981 artwork, known as the Warhol “Dollar Sign,” was stolen with another Warhol painting from its showroom in Manhattan’s SoHo area on February 14, 1998.
The gallery says it reported the theft to police and to the Art Loss Register.
The missing “Dollar Sign” artwork is one of a number of paintings on the same theme in different colors and sizes. Photographs of the canvases show a stylized dollar sign colored with streaky, polymer paint, and silkscreen ink on canvas.
In February 2006, a “Dollar Sign” series painting sold for $4.5 million in London.
In September 2007, court papers say, a Brooklyn resident, Jason Beltrez, tried to consign the Martin Lawrence artwork to Christie’s Inc. in Manhattan for sale. Christie’s, as usual, asked the Art Loss Register to check the painting against its database of lost and stolen artworks.
An ALR historian said the Beltrez consignment was the “Dollar Sign” that had been stolen from the Martin Lawrence gallery in 1998, says the lawsuit, filed yesterday in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court.
And in October 2007, a curator from the gallery’s parent, Chalk & Vermilion Fine Arts Inc., confirmed the canvas was the stolen Warhol, court papers say.
Christie’s still has the painting, whose value, court papers say, “is estimated to be in excess of $100,000.”
Christie’s associate general counsel, Keith Carlisle, issued a statement saying, “Christie’s is a disinterested third party in this lawsuit and is unable to comment on the pending litigation. We are simply storing the work of art until the lawsuit is resolved.”
The president of Martin Lawrence, Eric Dannemann, issued a statement through his lawyer Joel Lever, saying he was pleased that the artwork had been recovered and crediting “the good efforts of Christie’s and the Art Loss Register” and similar agencies in their efforts to recover lost or stolen art.
Telephone calls to Mr. Beltrez and to his lawyer were not immediately returned today.
Warhol, who made a career of turning famous faces and everyday objects such as Campbell’s soup cans and Coke bottles into pop art, died in 1987.
