FBI investigating 28 works sold as O'Keeffe originals

And, according to sources, the 28 pieces in the Canyon Suite series, which sold in 1993 for $5.5 million, passed through the same hands as 32 others that experts have rejected as authentic O'Keeffe works.

Jacobo "Jackie" Suazo, identified by biographers as a childhood protege of Ms. O'Keeffe's, was interviewed in Santa Fe, N.M., late last week by a federal agent.

Mr. Suazo said he painted three of the pieces and collaborated with Ms. O'Keeffe on 13 others in the Canyon Suite series while she was teaching him to paint in the 1940s and '50s. He filed copyright claims to those paintings last week in Washington.

"Mr. Suazo isn't the target," said Ernest Sanchez, Mr. Suazo's Washington attorney. "They just wanted to talk to him about the background of the paintings."

The FBI in Albuquerque, N.M., did not return calls seeking comment.

Canyon Suite - purportedly discovered in an Amarillo garage a year after Ms. O'Keeffe's 1986 death - ultimately was sold to Kansas City philanthropist R. Crosby Kemper. Until last November, when experts at the National Gallery of Art questioned their authenticity, the paintings had hung in the Kemper Museum in Kansas City, Mo.

Mr. Suazo, 65, said he had no idea how the paintings would have passed through Amarillo. Until he drove to Kansas City in November to view them at the Kemper, he said, the last time he saw them was in 1953 in Ms. O'Keeffe's home in Abiquiu, in northern New Mexico.

Santa Fe art dealer Gerald Peters said he purchased the Canyon Suite pieces from Terry Lee Caballero, an Amarillo therapist, for about $1 million. According to information later provided to the Kemper Museum, Ms. Caballero had said she received the watercolors from her father-in-law, Dr. Emilio Caballero, the retired chairman of West Texas A&M's art department.

According to the legacy of Canyon Suite, Ted Reid, an acquaintance of Ms. O'Keeffe's when she taught at West Texas Normal College in Canyon in the early 1900s, gave Dr. Caballero a large package in the 1970s. For 12 years, the package lay unopened in Dr. Caballero's garage.

Upon moving, Dr. Caballero opened the package, discovered the paintings and gave them to Terry Caballero, who is also Mr. Reid's granddaughter.

The Caballeros have declined to discuss the paintings.

According to Mr. Peters, while Ms. O'Keeffe was still living, Dr. Caballero approached him with two pieces of work purportedly done by the artist. Ms. O'Keeffe verified both pieces were hers, said Mr. Peters, who also operates galleries in New York and Dallas. One work was a fashion drawing, and the other was a painting, which is included in the recently released catalog of Ms. O'Keeffe's verified works.

Experts rejected about 250 paintings for inclusion in the catalog. According to Mr. Peters and another source in the art world, who asked not to be named, about 60 of those works - including the Canyon Suite series - passed through the hands of Dr. Caballero.

"How can two be the real thing and 60 not be?" Mr. Peters asked. "There's no clarity."

Under a settlement reached last month, Mr. Peters has made partial repayment to the Kemper of the $5.5 million and has received back the Canyon Suite works, which will undergo a materials analysis to determine their authenticity.

While the Canyon Suite pieces were said to have been painted by Ms. O'Keeffe from 1916 to 1918 when she was an undiscovered art teacher in Canyon, experts have questioned the dates of the paper on which they were painted. Some of the paper wasn't produced until the 1930s, according to a source familiar with the pieces, and other paper wasn't produced until the 1960s.

Mr. Peters, asked if he anticipates legal action to recoup his $1 million purchase price from Ms. Caballero, replied: "It is certainly an option, but I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know what the statute of limitations is."