Displaying items by tag: knoedler gallery

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.

With a trial looming, the Knoedler Gallery, its former director Ann Freedman, and Knoedler’s owner 8-31 Holdings have reached a settlement with the New York collector John Howard. Howard had bought a fake work by Willem de Kooning from the gallery for $4m. The lawsuit arose from Knoedler’s selling some $60m of fake Abstract Expressionist art in a scandal that sent shivers through the art world when it broke in late 2011.

In a forgery scandal that shook the art world, the now-shuttered Knoedler Gallery and its former director Ann Freedman will have to go to trial in two cases involving the sale of fake Abstract Expressionist paintings, Manhattan’s federal court ruled on Wednesday, 30 September.  

In his three-page order, Judge Gardephe denied the gallery’s and Freedman’s motions for summary judgment in the lawsuits brought by the New York collector John Howard and Sotheby’s chairman Domenico De Sole and his wife, Eleanore.

After vigorously fighting claims that they knowingly sold a string of fake Abstract Expressionist paintings totalling $60m, the now-defunct Knoedler Gallery and its former director Ann Freedman have quietly settled three of the ten lawsuits brought against them by angry buyers. The settlement terms were not disclosed.

Two of the cases against them, brought in Manhattan federal court, were closed this summer. The Manny Silverman and Richard Feigen galleries settled their suit last Tuesday, August 4.

In what has been termed a “document dump”, previously undisclosed information and inflammatory allegations in two of the Knoedler gallery art-forgery lawsuits are now public for the first time. Last Wednesday, Knoedler, its former director Ann Freedman, the head of a related holding company Michael Hammer, and a former employee Jaime Andrade filed motions seeking to dismiss the lawsuits. The next day, the collectors Eleanore and Domenico De Sole and John Howard struck back, arguing that their cases must go to trial and accusing Freedman of perjury “on multiple occasions, including before this court”, a charge she vigorously denies.

More than 500 pages of legal arguments and thousands of pages of exhibits are now before Manhattan’s federal court.

The Getty Research Institute has launched an expanded dealer stock book database that provides free online access to almost 24,000 records created from the Knoedler Gallery painting stock books. Books 1 through 6, dating from 1872 to 1920, are available now; stock books 7 through 11 will be added soon.

Knoedler Gallery in New York was a central force in the evolution of an art market in the U.S. This newly enhanced database can be used to reconstruct the itineraries of thousands of paintings that crossed the Atlantic during the Gilded Age—including many that ended up in major American museums.

The German power company EON SE announced that it will sell Jackson Pollock’s “Number 5 (Elegant Lady)” on May 13 at Christie’s in New York. The work, which was painted by the Abstract Expressionist master in 1951, is expected to fetch between $15 million and $20 million. Proceeds from the sale will support EON’s art and culture spending for the next few years. The company currently owns around 1,800 artworks and boasts one of the most important corporate art collections in the world.

The Pollock painting was acquired by EON’s predecessor company, Veba AG, from the German art dealer Alfred Schmela. Schmela had purchased the work from New York’s Knoedler Gallery in the 1970s. The work has hung in the Museum Kunstpalast next to EON’s headquarters in Dusseldorf since 2001. EON, which became Germany’s largest utility provider in 2000, has been forced to cut costs as renewable power sources have gained popularity, significantly lowering the company’s profits.

Before its sale in New York in May,  “Number 5 (Elegant Lady)” will be exhibited in Hong Kong and London.

165 years ago, the Knoedler Gallery opened its doors in New York and went on to help create some of the country’s most celebrated collections including those of Paul Mellon, Henry Clay Frick, and Robert Sterling Clark. Throughout the years, top-notch works by artists such as van Gogh, Manet, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Louise Bourgeois, and Willem de Kooning passed through the gallery. When the Soviet government sold hundreds of paintings from the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad in the 1930s, they chose to work with Knoedler to sell paintings by masters like Rembrandt, Raphael, and Velazquez.

Knoedler’s exemplary past is often forgotten as the gallery’s present has been mired in lawsuits and accusations that the company’s former president, Ann Freedman, was in the business of selling fakes. Last year, Knoedler Gallery closed its doors for good.

This week, Los Angeles’ Getty Research Institute announced that it had bought the Knoedler Gallery archive. Spanning from around 1850 to 1971, the archive includes stock books, sales books, a photo archive and files of correspondence, including letters from artists and collectors, some with illustrations. The Getty was interested in Knoedler’s archive because it offers an expansive glimpse into the history of collecting and the art market in the United States and Europe from the mid-19^th century to modern times.

The archive was purchased from Knoedler’s owner, Michael Hammer, for an undisclosed amount. Meticulously preserved, the archive will be available to scholars and digitized for online research after the Getty catalogues and conserves it all.

Domenico De Sole, chairman of the fashion powerhouse, Tom Ford International, is suing Michael Hammer, chairman of the disgraced Knoedler Gallery. De Sole and his wife, Eleanore, claim that Hammer sold the couple a fake Mark Rothko (1903–1970) painting (Untitled, 1956) for $8.3 million back in 2004. The allegation against Hammer is an amendment to a lawsuit that was originally filed against Knoedler on March 28.

De Sole’s suit is one of three against Knoedler and its former director, Ann Freedman. The suits all claim that Knoedler Gallery knowingly sold counterfeits. Between the three cases, the plaintiffs are seeking more than $70 million in damages.

Knoedler closed on November 30, 2011 after 165 years in the art world. A claim that the gallery sold a fake Jackson Pollack (1912–1956) painting for $17 million was the reason for Knoedler’s abrupt departure.

In addition to Hammer, the De Sole suit has introduced three new defendants to the ongoing Rothko/Knoedler case. Glafira Rosales, a Long Island art dealer who consigned artworks to Knoedler is newly involved as is as Jaime Andrade, a former Knoedler employee who introduced Rosales to the gallery. Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz, Rosales companion and business partner has also been added to the suit.

When Knoedler sold Untitled, 1956 to the De Soles, Freedman claimed that a Swiss collector had bought it directly from Rothko, and after the collector’s death, Knoedler was responsible for selling the work on his son’s behalf. The gallery had bought the painting from Rosales a year earlier for $950,000 and relied on her work about the painting’s provenance. Suspicions arose after Knoedler Gallery closed amidst the Pollack scandal and the De Soles’ lawyers hire a forensic conservator who found the painting’s marks and composition were inconsistent with Rothko’s technique.