The Germans are not much for Surrealism, apparently. A painting by the French surrealist artist Yves Tanguy, reportedly worth over €250,000 (~$340,000) was trashed by a cleaning crew at Düsseldorf Airport after being left behind by a traveler. It was recovered by German police last week, found at the bottom of a recycling bin.
The owner, a businessman in transit to Tel Aviv, forgot the painting at a check-in counter at the airport in November. Upon landing in Israel, he contacted German authorities, who were unable to locate the 16-by-24 inch, cardboard-wrapped work. Its whereabouts remained unknown until the man’s nephew traveled to Düsseldorf and reported the work missing at a local police precinct, where it was investigated and eventually recovered by inspector Michael Dietz.
Dietz contacted the airport’s cleaning company and, along with the airport’s property manager, led a thorough search of recycling containers.
“Sure enough, the valuable painting was right at the bottom,” said Düsseldorf Police in a statement reported by AP.
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I am not shocked at all because I had just gotten off a plane one time and discovered I had left a portfolio of art in the overhead bin in business class and asked the crew and the desk people to please retrieve it for me and was told it was impossible. I said, But I just got off the plane, just have someone go get it for me! They said, sorry, mam, impossible. I called on my brother-in-law who was a pilot on that airline to help me and still was unable to get my work back, I was told it had been thrown out. What if it were gold jewelry, I asked, because this is just as valuable for me. Sorry, they said, that too would be thrown out. (No way, I thought.) I never saw the work again. A fellow traveler, seeing my distress said, “Don’t worry, you’ll do it again and you’ll do it better.” And I did. But airlines definitely do not care a bit about art, and won’t lift a finger to save it from the trash, even Yves Tanguy’s, it seems. They did not see a price tag- only a strange old painting.