Gene Hackman’s Secret Art Trove Surges Past $2 Million in Emotional Estate Sale
A hidden cache of paintings and personal relics from Gene Hackman’s Santa Fe home surged past $2 million at Bonhams, revealing a private collector’s life he kept locked away for decades.
Gene Hackman always kept his life shut tight behind a screen door in Santa Fe. Friends whispered about the clutter. Neighbors saw lights flicker but little else. When he died at 95, what spilled out wasn’t the tabloid hoard folks expected, but a quiet museum’s worth of paintings he’d guarded for decades.
Bonhams cracked open the vault earlier this month, and the room stiffened. Thirteen pieces, a small army of modern American masters, marched across the block without a single misfire. The total climbed past $1.6 million before anyone had time to blink. Every lot sold. Every hand raised felt like someone pulling a curtain off a private life Hackman never shared.
The hammer dropped loudest on Milton Avery’s seaside solitude, Figure on the Jetty, which found its new keeper at just over half a million. Close behind came Richard Diebenkorn’s Green, a cool, taut canvas Hackman bought back in the late nineties and never let go of again.
For a man known for disappearing from Hollywood, these works revealed how he watched the world: slow, patient mornings; spare horizons; color as tension instead of noise. Even his own studio pieces—small portraits, loose landscapes—pulled in thousands from bidders hungry for something touched by his hand.
The online sales that followed felt more like a rummage through an old rehearsal trunk. Golden Globes, scripts, worn-down jackets from shoots long past. Even his momentary distractions—from pianos to vintage arcade machines—drew surprising crowds.
One more auction still waits in the wings, packed with personal relics. After that, the door on Hackman’s estate closes for good. The films made him famous, but the art he lived with told the story he never spoke aloud.
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