Artworks by the Bolivian artist Yllanes, thought to have been lost or overlooked for decades, were rediscovered through a complex chain of events involving several individuals in New York State. The works were initially acquired in 1978 by Edward Ford, a former police officer, and his wife, Teresa. According to accounts from those familiar with the situation, the pieces spent much of the ensuing 45 years largely in storage, with only limited public exposure in a handful of exhibitions in the Hudson Valley region.
The circumstances of how Ford came into possession of the art remain unclear and somewhat contested. Official documents associated with a 1992 exhibition at Bard College implied that Ford inherited the collection through a will from an elderly woman he had encountered during his police patrols on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. However, experts investigating the provenance, including Angelina Giovani, have found no evidence of such a will, and records show Ford’s patrol area was actually the Upper West Side.
Three men who had direct involvement with Ford and the Yllanes works provide a differing narrative. William Jenack, an auctioneer from Chester, New York, recounted that Ford discovered the artworks abandoned in a dumpster. Nicholas Clemente, an artist and curator involved with exhibitions of Yllanes’s work both in New Jersey and the Hudson Valley during the 1990s and early 2000s, said Ford claimed the artworks were stored for years by a building superintendent at a Columbia University residence before eventually being discarded. The superintendent reportedly handed over a metal tube containing rolled canvases along with several boxes of papers and works on paper to Ford.
The superintendent in question is believed to have been Louis Nieves, who passed away in 2019. Nieves’s stepdaughter, Yvette Mazzamuto, noted that although Nieves never interacted with anyone connected directly to the artist, she discovered show brochures among his personal effects, linking him to the exhibitions curated by Clemente and others.
Provenance expert Giovani suggests that Yllanes had left the pieces with his wife, Frontaura, who lived intermittently at the Columbia building into the early 1970s before returning to Bolivia. It is plausible that Frontaura entrusted the artworks to Nieves before her departure. The true reason why Ford told curators that he inherited the works remains unknown, though Jenack indicated Ford harbored concerns about possible legal claims, none of which have emerged.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Clemente helped research and promote Yllanes’s art but parted ways with Ford after disagreements over sales. Some of the artworks given to Clemente as compensation included several mural studies and numerous woodcuts.
A dealer named Anthony Gross facilitated connections between Ford and an art dealer who sold many of the paintings to collector David Le Louarn, at prices estimated between $10,000 and $15,000 each. One notable painting, titled “Lake Titicaca,” was sold by Gross to a private collector in Rhinebeck, New York, before Le Louarn acquired it in 2021. Le Louarn has described his longstanding fascination with Yllanes’s work and ultimately decided to sell the collection, suggesting it was time for the artist’s legacy to receive broader recognition.
The Toledo Museum of Art acquired “Lake Titicaca” but declined to disclose the purchase price. The museum’s director acknowledged the varying details regarding the artwork’s provenance but said the alternative accounts help confirm its chain of ownership. He emphasized that while Yllanes himself seemingly vanished from public view, his art endured, though neglected by both institutions and the commercial art market. The director suggested that the current interest represents a renewed Western acknowledgment of Yllanes’s contribution to art history rather than a true disappearance.