Federal tax agents swept into a Water Street gallery on Tuesday and confiscated about 200 works by Santa Fe area artist Robert Rivera.

Frank Quintanar, who has managed the Torres Gallery for six years, said a dozen U.S. Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Treasury Department agents, plus several city police officers, arrived at his shop about 11 a.m.

"It was well orchestrated," he said of the raid. "It was planned because all of the meters on this street were bagged ... for no parking. I looked when I walked in this morning, but I didn't think anything of it."

Quintanar said six to eight armed agents came into his shop while others waited outside, presented him with a notice of seizure and a notice of levy and began packing up Rivera's painted gourds and metal sculpture, and putting them in a trailer.

He said the agents frisked him, asked if he was armed, stayed close to him and even waited at the door when he went to the bathroom. He said the agents took photographs but did not give him an inventory of the objects seized or answer his questions.

Tags the agents put on items indicated the "taxpayers" in the case were Rivera and his wife, Lynda.

Ted W. Lyons, an IRS revenue officer from Mesa, Ariz., who left his card with Quintanar, referred a reporter to IRS spokesman Bill Brunson in Phoenix. "There is nothing I can speak to specifically due to disclosure laws and privacy issues," Brunson said.

Rivera was not available for comment. Quintanar said he had no phone number for Rivera, who lives in the Santa Fe area and who has been represented by the Torres Gallery for about six years.

Quintanar said the agents seemed "indignant" when he insisted that the gallery owns most of Rivera's work outright rather than holding it on consignment. But he said the agents took nearly all of Rivera's works in the shop and left only about a half-dozen pieces because he convinced officers these already were sold.

"The only reason they were left is that I could prove they were paid for and were not his property," he said. These included a panel with faux petroglyphs mounted with painted gourds, kachinas and other objects with American Indian designs, listed at $5,900; a barbed-wire wreath with dozens of small gourds and other decorative objects, listed at $80 to $100 each; and three gourd rattles.

Quintanar said Paula Hausvick of Santa Fe and California owns the gallery, having bought it from its namesake who originally opened it on San Francisco Street, then operated it in the Santa Fe Hilton and the Eldorado Hotel before moving to 207 W. Water St.

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.