Tuesday, February 21, 2023

The husband-and-wife forgers who fooled the art market

Rather than forging existing paintings, Wolfgang produced hundreds of original works that skillfully imitated the styles of deceased European artists including Max Ernst, Fernand Léger, Kees van Dongen and André Derain. His wife Helene then sold them as previously undocumented works, sometimes for seven-figure sums. The pair claimed to have inherited their art collection from Helene's grandfather, who they said had acquired it from a Jewish gallerist fleeing Hitler's Germany.

Read the whole article here.