Artist’s works resurface nearly five decades after disappearing from Berlin studio

Winston Branch at work in his studio in Berlin in 1978. Photograph: Courtesy Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin.

Twenty paintings by the Caribbean British abstract painter Winston Branch have been recovered after they disappeared without trace nearly five decades ago.

“Those works were stolen from his studio because he wasn’t able to pay the rent back in the 1970s,” his agent, Varvara Roza, told the Guardian. “This is shocking, isn’t it?”