Hundreds of art pieces discovered by mechanic in a barn could be worth millions

‘I pulled it out of this dumpster and I fell in love with it’

Some of the art on display last year in Connecticut (Jared Whipper / Instagram)

A mechanic has been praised for helping save the work of late artist Francis Hines, who allegedly left behind hundreds of pieces of works following his death in 2016, aged 96.

The artist, who was born in Washington DC, left hundreds of pieces of art in a barn in Connecticut after his death, CT Insider reported last week.

A contractor who found the artwork “abandoned” in the barn the year after the artist’s death alerted a mechanic, Jared Whipple, to the pieces because they featured car parts, thinking he would be interested.

Then Mr Whipple, a car mechanic from Waterbury, Connecticut, retrieved the artworks and began researching who the artist might be.

Eventually Mr Whipple said he figured out that Hines, a well known expressionist painter, was the person behind the trove of artworks.

That was with the help of art historian Peter Hastings Falk, who estimates that the collection of paintings are worth millions of dollars if sold together, CT Insider reported.

It was not clear exactly how many paintings were found by Mr Whipple, who had considered hanging the drawings, paintings and sculptures in The Warehouse indoor skate park for Halloween but decided against it, the report said.

In an effort to show the paintings to the public, however, the mechanic has organised for the art to be displayed in galleries in both New York and Connecticut, which begin next month. That was with the help of the Hollis Taggart galley.

“It was just an absolute fluke,” said Hollis Taggart to The Art Newspaper. “They came so close to being lost forever and now here they are being resurrected and brought out to the world.”

“But for someone who happened to spot them and someone who felt very passionate about the work, who didn’t have anything to do with the art world but was fascinated and really spent years delving deeply into this, Jared Whipple, and he deserves a lot of credit,” the gallery added.

Hines’ work has been compared to other late artists, Christo and Jean Claude, who also produced pieces of art that “wrapped” a building or monument with a fabric.

That included the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and the Bundestag building in Berlin, as well as one New York art work titled “The Gates”, which saw 7,503 vinyl "gates" placed along a 23 mile stretch of pathway in Central Park.

Hines was responsible for wrapping more than 10 buildings in New York in his career, including the Port Authority Bus Terminal and Washington Square Arch, as well as JFK Airport.

Mr Whipple. who also sold some of the pieces, told reporters last week: “I pulled it out of this dumpster and I fell in love with it. I made a connection with it. My purpose is to get Hines into the history books”.

Hines reached the heights of his career in the 1980s and Mr Whipple has already put the work on display in Connitecut, at the end of last year.