Police investigating an international art smuggling scheme discovered a previously unknown work by famed abstract painter Jackson Pollock in Bulgaria, officials said.

Bulgarian officials believe the artwork is an original uncatalogued piece by the world-renowned painter from 1949.

“To our great joy, we managed to establish and keep this painting and at the moment the expertise shows that it is an original,” said Petar Todorov, Bulgaria’s chief secretary of the ministry of internal affairs, according to the Novinite news agency.

Pollock was an abstract expressionist painter who revolutionized the art world with his “drip and splash” method of painting.

Getty ImagesPollock was a part of the Abstract Expressionism art movement during the late 1940s.

His radical approach to painting known as the “drip and splash” method, in which he poured, dripped and splashed paint from above onto his pieces, revolutionized the form and paved the way for contemporary art.