‘GREAT JOY’

Jackson Pollock Painting Worth $54M Found in Raid by Bulgarian Cops

The international operation targeting art smugglers resulted in the arrest of several people, authorities said.

A previously unknown work by the American artist Jackson Pollock was discovered in Bulgaria by police conducting a raid on suspected international art smugglers, authorities said. The painting could be worth up to $54 million, experts claimed, according to local radio. “This is an international operation with the participation of Europol, Greece and other countries,” Bulgaria’s chief secretary of the ministry of internal affairs Petar Todorov said, Reuters reported, citing the Novinite news agency. “To our great joy, we managed to establish and keep this painting and at the moment the expertise shows that it is an original.” The work was not described or shown by officials or in any local reports. Several people, including an unclear number of Bulgarian citizens, were arrested in the operation, state news agency BTA reported on Tuesday. Pollock, who died in 1956 at age 44, was a leading force behind the abstract expressionist movement, known for his “drip technique” that saw him pour and splash paint all over the canvas of a work.