Table of contents:
- 1. Han van Meegeren
- 2. Pei-Sheng Qian
- 3. Wolfgang Beltracki
- 4. William J. Toye
- 5. Elmir de Hori
- 6. Robert Driessen
- 7. John Myat
Video: 7 richest and luckiest forgers in the art world
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Pablo Picasso used to say: "Good artists make copies, and great artists make fakes." Echoing him, the famous British collector Charles Colton noted that “imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.” If such aphorisms are taken literally, the craft of falsification has its unconditional geniuses.
1. Han van Meegeren
Dutch artist Jan Vermeer, like many colleagues in the workshop, was unpopular during his lifetime and never lived in abundance. After his death, he left his wife only debts, children and unsold paintings. But on his creative legacy other people were able to make a lot of money - indirectly involved in painting, but well versed in trade. In the crowd of connoisseurs and traders, the Dutch forger Han van Meegeren, who from 1930 to 1948, led art historians and dealers of auction houses by the nose, forcing them to believe that they were acquiring 300-year-old works of Vermeer, crept into the crowd. In fact, the paintings were not even three months old. Khan van Meegeren managed to amass $ 30 million in his art scams.
2. Pei-Sheng Qian
Pei-Sheng Qian was convicted by the New York City Court for organizing a fraudulent scheme involving two unscrupulous Spanish art dealers and 5 shell companies. Pei-Sheng Qian sold forgeries of paintings by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning. Having seized $ 33 million, the 75-year-old Chinese-American artist fled to the Middle Kingdom. Due to the peculiarities of national legislation, a forger who is not allowed to travel abroad can draw for his pleasure until the end of his days.
3. Wolfgang Beltracki
Beltracchi did not fake paintings, he copied technique and created "lost canvases". Working with the memoirs of contemporaries and biographies of celebrities, the fraudsters obtained the necessary information and created a legend of the future forgery. However, these canvases cannot be called a fake in their pure form. After all, the original has never existed. The signature "under their works", however, was put by the hand of Wolvgan Beltracchi by Max Ernst, André Derain, Kees van Dongen, Heinrich Campendonck and 12 no less famous authors.
4. William J. Toye
Not all forgers are trying to imitate European masters. Although William J. Toye, an artist from New Orleans, began by imitating masters such as Degas, Monet, Gauguin and Renoir. He became best known for a series of fraudulent deals involving the sale of copies of works by African American folk artist Clementine Hunter. Hunter practiced direct selling as she did in Louisiana. It was with this fact that William J. Toye explained the "garage sale" origin of the paintings.
The FBI put an end to this story: $ 426,393 - payment to defrauded customers and two years of correctional labor. Apparently prison and debts have completely spoiled the already nasty character of the forger. To this day, William J. Toye claims that Ms. Clementine's paintings are only good for shooting at them.
5. Elmir de Hori
Hungarian artist Elmir de Hori was imprisoned for political dissent in his homeland, after he was in a German camp as a gay, in a prison in Mexico City as a murderer, in Spain for homosexuality and communication in a criminal environment. France demanded Hori's extradition for a new trial, accusing him of forging paintings by famous artists. Hori claimed that he never signed his copies, and therefore he was not a forger.
Hori did not become a fraudster, and a lethal dose of sleeping pills put an end to his biography. Elmir de Hori did not leave a complete list of forgeries and one can only guess how many imaginary works by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse to Alfred Sisley and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec are gathering dust in private collections and museums.
6. Robert Driessen
Dutch artist Robert Driessen is the most successful forger. Having sold more than 1,000 forgeries by sculptor Alberto Giacometti for more than $ 10 million, he dissolved in the Southeast direction. The forger's German accomplices are serving a well-deserved sentence and receive an additional one in the form of greeting cards from sunny Thailand. Driessen himself claims that he is "trapped … in paradise."
7. John Myat
John Myatt's crimes at Scotland Yard are considered "the biggest art fraud of the 20th century." Between 1986 and 1994, the English artist John Mayat created over 200 fakes, deceiving everyone from Sotheby's and European museums to ordinary art critics and art connoisseurs. In 1999, he was caught and sentenced to a year in prison. For good behavior, the forger was released after four months. Now John Mayat sells paintings as John Mayat.
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