One afternoon last fall, 55-year-old Kara Spellman was working from her Upper East Side apartment when her phone pinged. Her big brother Glenn, 58, a longtime licensed appraiser and self-described “picker” who lives in the same building, had texted a photo and a short message: “Take a look at this.”
The image was of a small abstract painting — 30 by 24 inches — titled “Landscape Forms” and newly listed on ShopGoodwill.com, the online auction wing of the national thrift store chain. The brushwork was gestural, the color palette felt just right, and in the lower-right corner, a signature: E.H.
Glenn had a hunch. Kara, director of Estates and Acquisitions at Hollis Taggart Gallery in Chelsea, had a stronger one.
“We both have a good eye,” she told Hyperallergic, laughing. “The brushwork looked too specific to be a copy.”
But instinct wasn’t enough. The siblings, who’ve teamed up before on treasure hunts, needed the catalogue raisonné — the official compendium of an artist’s authenticated work.
Kara emailed the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and begged them to pull the volume by the end of the day. Miraculously, someone she knew replied right away: They’d do it. She jumped in a cab.
“There it was,” she said. “Landscape Forms” (1959). Signed. Documented. And officially marked: “Whereabouts Unknown.”
The only visual in the book was an off-color image made from an unmarked slide in the artist’s papers at Oberlin College’s Allen Memorial Art Museum. In fact, as noted in the catalogue raisonné, it’s “one of 15 paintings known only by unmarked slides” included in that archive. But it matched exactly. And it was lost for decades until it popped up at a Goodwill warehouse in Frederick, Maryland.
The Jewish artist Eva Hesse, born in Hamburg in 1936, escaped the Nazis as a child via the Kindertransport to London with her sister. Their desperate parents followed soon after, and the family eventually resettled in New York. Hesse would go on to become one of the most influential figures of the postwar American avant-garde. Best known for her radical, impermanent sculptural work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and cheesecloth, she died in 1970, at just 34. Fragile and emotionally charged, her most important pieces helped define Post-Minimalism and, though rarely offered at auction, have sold for millions. Most are held in the collections of major museums.
But before all that, Hesse painted. “Landscape Forms,” made while she was an MFA student at Yale under Josef Albers — who affectionately called her “my little colorist”— is part of that rare early body of work.
In a Yale essay from her graduation year, Hesse wrote that the Abstract Expressionist “attempts to define a deeply-rooted bond between himself and nature.” That bond runs straight through the brushwork: muddy tones, confident lines, a mind in transition.
And then one day, it was gone. Was it lost? Stolen? A gift quietly passed along, then forgotten?
“I’m not an artist,” Glenn said in a phone call late at night after a grueling 10-hour day looking at estates. “I’m a treasure hunter. A detective.”
He’s been doing this kind of thing for decades — house calls, off-radar auctions, garage sales, backroom cleanouts, and, yes, obsessive scrolling through ShopGoodwill.com.
Now Glenn runs his own gallery in his off hours, founded in 2016. He’s a certified member of the Appraisers Association of America and works mostly by appointment.
“Once or twice a year, something outstanding shows up there,” he said of ShopGoodwill. “You just have to know what you’re looking at.”
With Kara’s confirmation from The Met that the piece was indeed “Landscape Forms,” listed in the official record, complete with the enigmatic “Whereabouts Unknown,” he was all in.
For bigger finds, Glenn often partners with Hollis Taggart, his former boss and longtime friend. They agreed it was worth pursuing together. After winning the lot for $40,000 — not exactly a steal, but Hesse’s auction record is above $4 million — Glenn drove to Frederick, Maryland, himself. Eight hours round-trip.
“I’ve had pieces ruined in transit before,” he said. “This one, I wasn’t taking chances.”
Back in New York, Glenn brought the painting to Hollis Taggart Gallery. There, it underwent conservation: surface cleaning, minor restoration, and re-stretching.
It was shown at two major art fairs, including the Armory Show last September. There was interest — almost a sale — but no one bit.
“People still associate Hesse with her sculpture,” Kara said. “But this is a beautiful early piece, and it throws people. Not everyone knows she painted before the sculpture. If I had the money, I’d buy it.”
Now, after regrouping, “Landscape Forms” is headed to Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale in May, with an estimate of $60,000–$80,000. Several experts who spoke to Hyperallergic believe it could go much higher. After all, other early Hesse paintings have fetched six figures, and this one has the kind of backstory auction houses dream of.
Not every “lost Hesse” turns out to be one. At the recent opening of BravinLee’s Golden Thread, a recurring textile and fiber art show in Manhattan’s Seaport District, co-curator John Post Lee recalled a moment from the early 2000s, back when his gallery (with partner Karin Bravin) was at 526 West 26th. One day, he spotted a dusty painting leaning against the building basement’s wall.
It looked suspiciously Hesse-ish. For about five minutes, he thought he’d struck gold.
“I pulled one out — muted palette, expressive brushwork, the initials ‘E.H.’—and thought, Jesus, maybe,” he said.
He brought in Barry Rosen, his friend and longtime overseer of the Hesse estate. Rosen took one look and gave a subtle shake of his head: not a Hesse.
“And that was that,” Lee said. “Was it some young artist channeling her? You think you’re Joan Mitchell. You think you’re Eva Hesse.”
The painting went back into the heap. No provenance. No Christie’s estimate.
The Spellman siblings, Gen Xers who’ve been in New York for decades, grew up in Ballston Spa, near Saratoga Springs, and got their start as bottle diggers.
“There was an old slaughterhouse near the creek bed,” Glenn recalled. “We’d find colored, hand-blown bottles, sell them downtown, and buy candy. You’d get 25 pieces for a quarter bottle — 100 pieces if you hit something rare. I learned early what antique dealers wanted.”
They’ve been collaborating on finds for years now. “My brother’s a licensed dealer — but you can just say he’s the picker,” Kara said. “I’m the researcher with the books.”
Both are longtime fans of American Pickers (2010–), the History Channel’s reality TV series whose hosts travel across the country in search of valuable artifacts. “I still watch it religiously,” Glenn added. “You pick up more than you’d think.”
When asked how it felt to hold the Hesse in his hands for the first time, Glenn got quiet.
“It was very exciting,” he said. “You get the thrill when you win it, but when you finally handle it, when you know it’s real, that’s the magic.”