Displaying items by tag: forgeries

There are allegations of forgeries on display at the Chicago Art Institute one of the city's most popular attractions and one of the top museums in the world.

This illusion of reality involves the Chicago exhibition of legendary artist Edgar Degas. His paintings are on display right now at the Art Institute along with the famous 19th century artist's bronze sculptures.

US judge Paul Gardephe is considering nearly two dozen motions of enormous consequence for the first trial in the $60m Knoedler Gallery forgery scandal scheduled to begin on 25 January. The motions concern what evidence the jury will hear, and so will help influence their verdict on whether the defendants—the gallery, its former director Ann Freedman, and its owner 8-31 Holdings—should pay the collectors Domenico and Eleanore De Sole up to $25.3m for selling the couple a fake Mark Rothko painting in 2004.

After years of being investigated by Interpol and law enforcement agencies in Mexico, Peru, Spain, Germany, and the US, antiquities dealer Leonardo A. Patterson has been convicted of smuggling pre-Columbian artifacts and selling fake objects.

Patterson developed his trade in New York in the 1960s by selling pre-Columbian antiquities.

Collecting scrimshaw is a dicey hobby, given the prevalence of forgeries in the field — plastic resin copies are known as fakeshaw.

The welding supply magnate Thomas Mittler, who died in 2010 at 67, bought whale bone and tooth carvings with the guidance of scholars and dealers, including Nina Hellman, who owns a marine antiques store on Nantucket. Her new book, “Through the Eyes of a Collector: The Scrimshaw Collection of Thomas Mittler,” was published by Charlotte Mittler, the widow of Mr. Mittler; he had long planned to commission a publication about his hundreds of acquisitions.

In Spain, police have busted up a group that allegedly created and sold fake works of art to unsuspecting collectors.

According to The Associated Press, the brazen gang was trying to pass of works from such easily identifiable masters as pop artist Andy Warhol, the surrealist Joan Miro, and even the most famous painter of the 20th century Pablo Picasso.

The officers have arrested nine suspects in the eastern region of Valencia.

An Interior Ministry statement said the people arrested are both those who have allegedly created the fake art, as well as possible accomplices who helped the paintings be sold in galleries and online.

An East Hampton man accused of selling dozens of fake paintings and sketches purported to be by famous artists, and using some of the money to buy a submarine, pleaded guilty in federal court on Monday to one count of wire fraud.

Prosecutors said the man, John Re, 54, claimed the pieces were by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, and caused about $2.5 million in losses to victims. For nine years beginning in 2005, Mr. Re tricked art collectors by creating a false provenance, the document that shows the history of a piece of art, prosecutors said. He bought the submarine, which he called the Deep Quest, with the proceeds from a fake Pollock painting, they said.

Detectives from the German Federal Criminal Police seized a trove of forged paintings; complete with forged provenance documents and receipts, as well as jewelery and other valuables in a coordinated raid across six German states last June - According to Der Hessische Rundfunk. Investigators into the illegal ring believe that the artworks were painted in forgery studios that were based in Russia and Israel and then shipped to Germany for sale. This information was obtained during two simultaneous raids in Switzerland and Israel.

Some 15 months after Police uncovered the international art forgery ring, German state prosecutors have officially charged two men with the crimes, "Der Spiegel" reported.

Today's modern art forger is capable of producing fake works of art so perfect that even trained experts are unable to spot them. Even down to the most minute details of the pigments, binders, and canvas, these fakes are almost better than the works they're based on. But thanks to a byproduct of the Atomic age, the art world has a potent tool for finding forgeries.

Since the start of the 1960s, the art world—especially the modern art world—has been besieged by a torrent of faked "masterpieces." Peggy Guggenheim (yes, that Guggenheim) was once famously duped into purchasing what was believed to be a canvas painting by French artist Fernand Léger completed around 1913. It hung in her private collection for decades before being revealed as a forgery. This problem only expanded through the 1980s and 1990s as the market for modern art exploded.

Miami pastor was sentenced Monday to six months in jail for peddling bogus examples of some of British artist Damien Hirst's signature paintings.

Kevin Sutherland had faced a possible seven years in prison in the attempted grand larceny case, which accused him of knowingly trying to sell five fake Hirsts for $185,000 to an undercover detective. Sutherland, who plans to appeal, said he was just an art-world tyro who got confusing signals about the pieces' authenticity.

On Tuesday, October 1, 2013, nearly six years after federal authorities raided Chicago’s Kass/Meridian Gallery, gallery owner Alan Kass was sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to spend an additional six months on home confinement for selling forged artworks to unsuspecting buyers. Kass and two associates, including a New York distributor who is still awaiting sentencing, were indicted in 2011 as part of a comprehensive investigation into international art fraud.

Kass, who pleaded guilty to nine fraud counts in May, was given a more lenient sentence due to a spate of recent health problems. Kass collected over $480,000 by selling fake works by Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali and other well-known artists.