Ringleader in Norval Morrisseau art fraud ring sentenced to 5 years on fraud charges

Fraud experts, Morrisseau estate say long journey to weed out fakes remains
Michelle Allan · CBC News

A camera captures a picture of a man walking by a painting done in the woodland style.

A reporter walks past 'Androgyny' by Norval Morrisseau (right) and 'Tweaker' by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun during a media tour of the Canadian and Indigenous Art: 1968 to Present at the National Gallery of Canada's contemporary art galleries Tuesday May 2, 2017, in Ottawa. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press )

One of eight people charged in what Ontario Provincial Police say is the largest art fraud investigation in Canadian history has been sentenced to five years incarceration, with credit for one year of time already served.

Gary Lamont pleaded guilty on Dec. 4 to a charge of making false documents, mainly artwork, that was attributed to Morrisseau and a count of defrauding the public in an amount exceeding $5,000.

Lamont oversaw the production and distribution of hundreds of forged artworks falsely attributed to Morrisseau starting in 2002, according to the agreed statement of facts submitted to the courts. According to the statement of facts, 190 "Lamont Ring Forgeries" have been identified to date, with 117 of them seized by investigators.

"To have one of the key figures that we've been interested in admit to his guilt in terms of creating fake Morrisseaus, that's a huge step forward," said Jonathan Sommer, a lawyer who specializes in art forgery.

Sommer represented Barenaked Ladies keyboardist Kevin Hearn in a lawsuit against a Toronto art dealer for allegedly selling him a fake Morrisseau painting. The Ontario Court of Appeal sided with Hearn and awarded him $60,000 in damages. It used to be very difficult to convince police and courts to take art fraud seriously, said Sommer.

"They treat it almost like an amusing spectacle, you know, a tale of charming rogues that defraud people who have more money than they know what to do with," he said. "There's a lot of really ugly criminality that's connected with this art fraud, Sommer said." Sommer estimates there are significantly more fraudulent works in circulation than genuine Morrisseau paintings. "It severely muddied his legacy," he said. "They undermine the relationship between viewers of the art and who Morrisseau really was."

Police laid more than 40 charges against eight people this past March after a years-long investigation into the forgery of the famous Anishinaabe artist's work. The investigation led to the seizure of more than 1,000 pieces of forged Morrisseau artwork

"There is likely at least another 5,000 fraudulent artworks out there, " said Cory Dingle, executive director of Norval Morrisseau's estate. "The real battle hasn't even started." Morrisseau's estate faces an expensive and fraught task — finding, investigating and denouncing the thousands of fake works to preserve Morrisseau's authentic legacy.

Norval Morrisseau as artist-in-residence in the Thomson Shack at the McMichael Gallery in Kleinberg, Ont., on July 11, 1979. (Ian Samson/McMichael Canadian Art Collection Archives) The sheer volume of fakes to identify combined with the difficulty of legally proving them as inauthentic is an undue burden for the estate to bear, said Dingle.

"Canada really needs to have a federal arts-fraud division, because truly we are talking about our culture and our heritage that is being defrauded," he said. Some other countries allow police to work with artist's estates to identify and destroy fake paintings, said Dingle. "That's how they clean up their market. Right now, Canada has no mechanism such as that."

Diane Marie Champagne, Benjamin Paul Morrisseau, Linda Joy Tkachyk and David John Voss will be in court in Thunder Bay. Also charged are Jeffrey Gordon Cowan of Niagara-on-the-Lake, James (Jim) White of Essa Township and David P. Bremner of Locust Hill. They will be appearing in Barrie for pre-trial.

A legacy diminished, but not destroyed
As the founder of Woodlands style art, Morrisseau's influence is so pervasive that the impact of the fraud reverberates throughout the Indigenous art scene, said art gallery owner Sophia Lebessis, who is Inuk.

"You're filled with rage and disappointment on a cultural level because it's like, here's another aspect of our lives that are just taken over and destroyed," said Lebessis, who owns Transformation Fine Art, a Calgary-based gallery of Inuit and First Nations art.

While fraudsters have damaged Morrisseau's legacy, Lebessis said they can't take away the positive impact his art has on the people who view it.

"What these criminals are not going to take away from us is that magical moment when you're walking into a gallery or you're walking into a museum and you're seeing a Morrisseau for your very first time," said Lebessis,

"That feeling that you felt, and all of a sudden your worldview changes, of Indigenous culture and Indigenous people. All of a sudden you're connected to this master artist who you might never have met."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/norval-morrisseau-art-fraud-sentencing-1.7059535

A German Museum Employee Has Been Caught ‘Shamelessly’ Swapping Original Paintings for Fakes to Fund His Lavish Lifestyle

The man is said to have spent the money on a new apartment, wristwatches, and a Rolls-Royce.

Franz von Stuck, The Fairy Tale of the Frog King (1891). Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images.

A German museum employee has confessed to an audacious scheme, after he was caught swapping out paintings with forgeries and selling the originals to fund a luxury lifestyle. He has received a suspended prison sentence of one year and nine months and must pay back more than €60,000 ($63,500) to the unnamed German museum, the Munich District Court ordered on September 11.

The man, now aged 30, stole three paintings while working at the museum in Munich as a technician between May 2016 and April 2018. He replaced the paintings with fakes while they were in storage, consigning the originals to a Munich auction house.

The defendant allegedly used the money to pay debts and fund a luxury lifestyle, the court heard. “Among other things, he bought a new apartment, expensive wristwatches, and bought a Rolls-Royce,” read the verdict, noting that the man now showed remorse. “He stated that he had acted without thinking. He could no longer explain his behavior today.”

After replacing Franz Stuck’s Das Märchen vom Froschkönig (The Fairy Tale of the Frog King) (1891) with a forgery, the man pretended the original was a family heirloom and it was sold at Ketterer Kunst auction house in May 2017 to a Swiss gallery for €70,000 ($74,000). After auction house fees, he received $49,127.40 ($52,000).

Two more paintings that were switched out for fakes, Franz von Defregger’s Zwei Mädchen beim Holzsammeln im Gebirge (Two Girls Gathering Wood in the Mountains) and Eduard von Grützner’s Die Weinprüfung (Tasting the Wine), brought in an additional €11,490.50 ($12,700). An attempt to sell a fourth painting, Franz von Defregger’s Dirndl, at another Munich auction house was unsuccessful. The man made €60,617 ($64,000) in total.

“We have, of course, fulfilled our duty of care in full and have researched the works mentioned extensively,” a spokesperson for Ketterer Kunst told Artnet News. “We regret that the works were stolen from the museum with such high criminal energy. We cooperated closely with the LKA (Bavarian State Criminal Police Office) at an early stage and handed over all documents to solve this case.”

The unnamed German museum is currently trying to arrange for the return of the pictures, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung. It apparently has many valuable German paintings languishing in storage thanks to a history of receiving bequests from local foundations and families.

“The defendant shamelessly exploited the opportunity to access the storage rooms in the employer’s buildings and sold valuable cultural assets in order to secure an exclusive standard of living for himself and to show off,” the verdict summarized.

The apparent vulnerability of the museum’s collection to theft while in storage recalls the recent scandal of a senior curator at the British Museum accused of stealing some 1,500 objects, several of which were sold for cheap on eBay. Most of these items had never been catalogued, revealing the complex challenges faced by museums tasked with keeping track of vast holdings.


https://news.artnet.com/art-world/german-museum-employee-swapped-paintings-fakes-2367937Jo Lawson-Tancred, September 25, 2023

Hartwig Fischer, British Museum Director resigns after worker fired for theft

Hartwig Fischer, the director of the British Museum, in London on Aug. 27, 2020. Just days after the museum announced that it had fired an employee who was suspected of looting its storerooms and selling items on eBay, Fischer announced Friday, Aug. 25, 2023, that he was resigning, effective immediately. (Tom Jamieson/The New York Times) by Alex Marshall

LONDON.- Just days after the British Museum announced that it had fired an employee who was suspected of looting its storerooms and selling items on eBay, the museum’s director announced Friday that he was resigning, effective immediately.

Hartwig Fischer, a German art historian who had led the world-renowned institution since 2016, said in a news release that he was leaving the post at a time “of the utmost seriousness.”

Fischer, 60, said that it was “evident” that under his leadership, the museum did not adequately respond to warnings that a curator may be stealing items. “The responsibility for that failure must ultimately rest with the director,” Fischer said.

A few hours after Fischer’s resignation, the museum announced that its deputy director, Jonathan Williams, had also “agreed to voluntarily step back from his normal duties” until an investigation into the thefts was complete.

Trouble has been brewing at the British Museum since it announced last week that items had been stolen from its collection. The museum did not say how many objects were taken or how valuable they were. But it said that the missing, stolen or damaged pieces included “gold jewelry and “gems of semiprecious stones and glass” dating from as far back as the 15th century B.C.

Ever since, a stream of revelations around the museum’s handling of the thefts undermined Fischer’s position. On Tuesday, The New York Times and the BBC published emails showing that he had downplayed concerns raised by Ittai Gradel, a Denmark-based antiquities dealer, about potential thefts.

In an email to a trustee in October 2022, Fischer said that “the case has been thoroughly investigated,” adding that “there is no evidence to substantiate the allegations.”

Fischer initially defended his response, saying in a statement Wednesday that his handling of the allegations had been robust and that the museum had taken the warnings “incredibly seriously.” The extent of the problem only became clear later, he said, after the museum undertook “a full audit” of its collections.

His defense did little to quell criticism in Britain. On Wednesday, The Times of London wrote that the thefts were “a national disgrace, calling into question the museum’s own claims for its stewardship of cultural treasures, and for which it needs to give a full accounting.”

The unfolding drama was also watched closely in countries that are seeking the return of pieces in the British Museum’s vast collection, which includes more than 8 million items, many from Britain’s former colonies. Lawmakers in Greece and Nigeria used the thefts as an opportunity to call for the return of contested artifacts.

Lina Mendoni, Greece’s culture minister, said in an interview Monday with To Vima, a Greek newspaper, that the case reinforces her country’s demands for the return of the Parthenon Marbles, a series of sculptures and frieze panels, sometimes known as the Elgin marbles, that once decorated the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. The thefts raised questions about the “safety and integrity of all of the museum’s exhibits,” Mendoni said.

And Thursday, Nigerian officials reiterated their long-standing call for the British Museum to return a collection of artifacts known as the Benin Bronzes, which British troops looted in 1897.

Fischer’s time at the museum coincided with a sea change in attitudes over what rightfully belongs in the West’s museums, and an increase in the volume and intensity of restitution demands. He took over at the British Museum in 2016, having formerly run the State Art Collections of Dresden, a prestigious collection of museums in Germany.

In late July, shortly before the news broke that the museum had fired a worker suspected of theft, Fischer announced that he would step down from his role next year. But as the crisis at the museum deepened this week, his position looked increasingly untenable.

The turmoil has come at “a very bad moment,” said Charles Saumarez Smith, a former director of the Royal Academy of Arts, in London. The British Museum is expected to announce a major renovation project that The Financial Times has reported will cost 1 billion pounds, or about $1.26 billion, and the current uncertainty could make fundraising much more difficult, he said.

The resignation was “an act of symbolic bloodletting,” Saumarez Smith said, but it may not end the British Museum’s woes. There are clearly “bigger issues that need to be resolved” at the institution, he added, including the questions about whether it has a handle on its inventory.

Fischer said in his statement that he expected the museum to “come through this moment and emerge stronger” but that he had “come to the conclusion that my presence is proving a distraction.”

“That is the last thing I would want,” he said.

George Osborne, the museum chair, said in the release that the board had accepted Fischer’s decision. “I am clear about this: We are going to fix what has gone wrong,” Osborne said. “The museum has a mission that lasts across generations. We will learn, restore confidence and deserve to be admired once again.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
https://artdaily.cc/news/161675/British-Museum-Director-resigns-after-worker-fired-for-theft

British Museum worker fired over missing treasures

The British Museum has sacked a member of staff and imposed “emergency measures” to increase security after it found items from its collection to be missing.

It launched an independent review of security after items including gold jewellery and gems of semi-precious stones and glass dating from the 15th century BC to the 19th century AD were found to be missing, stolen or damaged.

Legal action against the dismissed member of staff will be taken and the matter is also being investigated by the economic crime command of the Metropolitan police.

The museum’s independent review, led by Sir Nigel Boardman, a former trustee, and Lucy D’Orsi, chief constable of the British Transport Police, will investigate and make recommendations on future security arrangements. It will also “kickstart a vigorous programme to recover the missing items”, the museum said.

Most of the missing items were small pieces kept in a storeroom belonging to one of the museum’s collections. None had recently been on public display, and they were kept primarily for academic and research purposes.

George Osborne, chair of the British Museum, said: “The trustees of the British Museum were extremely concerned when we learned earlier this year that items of the collection had been stolen. “The trustees have taken decisive action to deal with the situation, working with the team at the museum. We called in the police, imposed emergency measures to increase security, set up an independent review into what happened and lessons to learn, and used all the disciplinary powers available to us to deal with the individual we believe to be responsible.

“Our priority is now threefold: first, to recover the stolen items; second, to find out what, if anything, could have been done to stop this; and third, to do whatever it takes, with investment in security and collection records, to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

“This incident only reinforces the case for the reimagination of the museum we have embarked upon. It’s a sad day for all who love our British Museum, but we’re determined to right the wrongs and use the experience to build a stronger museum.” Hartwig Fischer, the museum’s director, said: “This is a highly unusual incident. I know I speak for all colleagues when I say that we take the safeguarding of all the items in our care extremely seriously.

“The museum apologises for what has happened, but we have now brought an end to this – and we are determined to put things right. “We have already tightened our security arrangements and we are working alongside outside experts to complete a definitive account of what is missing, damaged and stolen. This will allow us to throw our efforts into the recovery of objects.”

Boardman said: “The British Museum has been the victim of theft and we are absolutely determined to use our review in order to get to the bottom of what happened, and ensure lessons are learnt. We are working alongside the Metropolitan police in the interest of criminal justice to support any investigations.

“Furthermore, the recovery programme will work to ensure the stolen items are returned to the museum. It will be a painstaking job, involving internal and external experts, but this is an absolute priority – however long it takes – and we are grateful for the help we have already received.” The British Museum said it would not comment further while the police investigation continued.

A spokesperson for the Met said: “We have been working alongside the British Museum. “There is currently an ongoing investigation – there is no arrest and inquiries continue. We will not be providing any further information at this time.”

It is understood that the museum hopes the review of security will be completed by the end of the year.

Items that have gone missing from the museum in previous years include a number of coins and medals taken in the 1970s, and Roman coins stolen in a 1993 break-in.

In 2002, the museum reviewed security after a 2,500-year-old 12cm-high Greek statue was stolen by a member of the public. Two years later, Chinese j went missing.

In 2017, it was revealed a £750,000 Cartier diamond ring from the heritage asset collection had been reported absent in 2011.

Harriet Sherwood Arts and culture correspondent - Wed 16 Aug 2023 20.37 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/16/british-museum-sacks-staff-member-after-items-vanish-from-collection

Italian Police Have Arrested Suspected Forger Pasquele ‘Lino’ Frongia for Allegedly Faking Paintings by Franz Hals, El Greco, and Others

The forgery ring is believed to have been masterminded by French collector Giuliano Ruffini.
Sarah Cascone, June 28, 2023

Lino Frongia. Photo ©Lino Frongia.

Once again, Italian authorities have arrested Pasquale “Lino” Frongia, the artist suspected of forging a string of Old Master paintings that have appeared at high-profile museums and made millions at auctions by passing as the work of Frans Hals, Orazio Gentileschi, Diego Velázquez, El Greco, and Parmigianino, among others.

The 65-year-old painter was first apprehended in 2019, under a warrant from French judge Aude Burési, who is investigating the forgery ring believed to have been masterminded by Giuliano Ruffini, a French art collector. But the court in Bologna declined to extradite Frongia, citing inconsistent charges. After Burési issued a new European warrant, police arrested Frongia in Emilia, according to the Art Newspaper.

The long-running investigation into the fake Old Masters first made headlines in 2016, when authorities raided an exhibition featuring the collection of the prince of Lichtenstein on view at the Caumont Centre d’Art in Aix-en-Provence. They seized the centerpiece of the show, a stunning painting of Venus believed to be by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

Soon, more paintings began to fall under suspicion, all linked to one name: Ruffini. Rumors had been circulating about his ties to forgeries for years—Italian police had even raided his home prior to the Cranach seizure—and now, one by one, the individual works are being flagged as fakes.

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Venus (1531).
The painting is now believed to be a fake. ©Liechtenstein. The Princely Collections, Vaduz–Vienna.
In his defense, Ruffini has both denied the forensic analysis identifying the works as contemporary fakes, and insisted that he never claimed that any of the paintings were authentic Old Masters—the attributions to some of art history’s biggest names were first raised by the experts, not him.

Last November, Ruffini was reportedly on the run; police arrested him the following month and extradited him to France. He is currently under house arrest, facing charges of gang fraud, forgery, and money laundering.

The collector’s son, Mathieu Ruffini, is also suspected of being involved. Financial records show that the younger Ruffini made several payments to Frongia, including a $740,000 wire transfer in 2007. He was charged with money laundering and is out on bail.


https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-police-arrest-suspected-old-master-forger-2328903

Florida art scammer sentenced to over 2 years in federal prison

An undated photo provided by The United States Department of Justice of a fake Jean-Michel Basquiat work sold by Daniel Elie Bouaziz for $12 million. The Florida art dealer who promised bargains on works he claimed were originals by master artists including Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring and Henri Matisse has been sentenced to more than two years in federal prison for laundering money made running a counterfeit scheme, federal officials said. (The United States Department of Justice via The New York Times) by Livia Albeck-Ripka

NEW YORK, NY.- A Florida art dealer who promised bargains on works he claimed were originals by master artists including Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring and Henri Matisse has been sentenced to more than two years in federal prison for running a counterfeit scheme, federal officials said. The man, Daniel Elie Bouaziz, 69, owned several art galleries in Palm Beach County, Florida, through which he operated the counterfeit scheme. He was sentenced on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Miami to 27 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and was ordered to pay a $15,000 fine, court filings show.

Bouaziz pleaded guilty in February to one charge of money laundering on the condition that federal prosecutors drop 16 other counts, according to the documents. Neither Bouaziz nor his lawyer could immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday evening.

According to prosecutors, Bouaziz, a French and Israeli citizen born in Algeria, was in the United States on a B-2 visitor’s visa. They said the pieces he had represented as authentic works were cheap reproductions he had bought through online auctions. He was charged in June after an investigation that included the serving of search warrants at his galleries, a review of financial records and undercover purchases of what prosecutors had deemed to be fraudulent art.

According to the federal complaint, Bouaziz conducted his art dealing through three companies: Galerie Danieli, Danieli Fine Art and VIP Rentals LLC. The website for Danieli Fine Art advertises a collection from a wide range of notable artists, including Monet, Rodin, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Willem de Kooning. But counterfeit Andy Warhols were what sent Bouaziz to prison.

On Oct. 25, 2021, Bouaziz sold what he had claimed were “authentic, original Warhol pieces,” some of them “signed by the artist,” to an unwitting customer, federal prosecutors said. The customer gave Bouaziz a $200,000 down payment, which he then wired to other accounts. According to court documents, Bouaziz then took five artworks to the buyer’s house. Federal prosecutors did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday evening, but in a sentencing memorandum, they noted that Bouaziz “knew some of the pieces he sold were not genuine.” In one instance, they added, he sold fraudulent art to an undercover agent for $25,0000.

Bouaziz, they added, had won over many in Palm Beach with his philanthropy, his luxury cars and invitations to lunch and art events. But his generosity, prosecutors said, belied a darker reality. “Bouaziz painted a picture of himself that he wanted others to see and believe,” they said.

A restitution hearing is scheduled for Aug. 16. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

https://artdaily.cc/news/157920/Florida-art-scammer-sentenced-to-over-2-years-in-federal-prison

The mystery of the disappearing van Gogh

The Shanghai apartment complex that is home to Liu Hailong, the man who paid the nearly $62 million bill for the van Gogh, on March 10, 2023. After “Still Life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies” by Vincent van Gogh sold at auction in November 2014, a movie producer claimed to be the owner. It later vanished from sight, with a trail leading to Caribbean tax havens and a jailed Chinese billionaire. (The New York Times) by Michael Forsythe, Isabelle Qian, Muyi Xiao and Vivian Wang

NEW YORK, NY.- The bidding for Lot 17 started at $23 million. In the packed room at Sotheby’s in New York City, the price quickly climbed: $32 million, $42 million, $48 million. Then a new prospective buyer, calling from China, made it a contest between just two people.
On the block that evening in November 2014 were works by impressionist painters and modernist sculptors that would make the auction the most successful yet in the firm’s history. But one painting drew particular attention: “Still Life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies,” completed by Vincent van Gogh weeks before his death. Pushing the price to almost $62 million, the Chinese caller prevailed. His offer was the highest for a van Gogh still life at auction. In the discreet world of high-end art, buyers often remain anonymous. But the winning bidder, a prominent movie producer, would proclaim in interview after interview that he was the painting’s new owner.

The producer, Wang Zhongjun, was on a roll. His company had just helped bring “Fury,” the World War II movie starring Brad Pitt, to cinemas. He dreamed of making his business China’s version of The Walt Disney Co. The sale, according to Chinese media, became a national “sensation.” It was a sign — after the acquisition of a Pablo Picasso by a Chinese real estate tycoon the year before — that the country was becoming a force in the global art market. “Ten years ago, I could not have imagined purchasing a van Gogh,” Wang said in a Chinese-language interview with Sotheby’s. “After buying it, I loved it so much.” But Wang may not be the real owner at all. Two other men were linked to the purchase: an obscure middleman in Shanghai who paid Sotheby’s bill through a Caribbean shell company, and the person he answered to — a reclusive billionaire in Hong Kong.

The billionaire, Xiao Jianhua, was one of the most influential tycoons of China’s gilded age, creating a financial empire in recent decades by exploiting ties to the Communist Party elite and a new class of superrich businessmen. He also controlled a hidden offshore network of more than 130 companies holding more than $5 billion in assets, according to corporate documents obtained by The New York Times. Among them was Sotheby’s invoice for the van Gogh.

The secrecy that pervades the art world and its dealmakers — including international auction houses such as Sotheby’s — has drawn scrutiny in the years since the sale as authorities try to combat criminal activity. Large transactions often pass through murky intermediaries, and the vetting of them is opaque. Citing client confidentiality, Sotheby’s declined to comment on the purchase. Today, Xiao, 51, is a man who has fallen far. Abducted from his luxury apartment and now imprisoned in mainland China, he was convicted of bribery and other misdeeds that prosecutors claimed had threatened the country’s financial security. Meanwhile, Wang is struggling, liquidating properties as his film studio loses money each year. And the still life, according to several art experts, has been offered for private sale. For a century after van Gogh gathered flowers and placed them in an earthen vase to paint, the artwork’s provenance could be easily traced, and the piece was often exhibited in museums for visitors to admire. Now the painting has vanished from public view, its whereabouts unknown.

A Painting’s Many Lives
In May 1890, van Gogh arrived in Auvers-sur-Oise, a rustic village outside Paris. Deeply depressed, he had cut off much of his left ear a year and a half earlier. His stay at an asylum had not helped. But within hours of coming to the village, he met Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, a doctor and an art enthusiast. “I’ve found in Dr. Gachet a ready-made friend and something like a new brother,” van Gogh wrote to his sister. The physician encouraged van Gogh to ignore his melancholy and focus on his paintings. He completed nearly 80 of them in two months, including “Portrait of Dr. Gachet,” considered a masterpiece. He produced “Vase With Daisies and Poppies” at the physician’s home and may have given it to him in exchange for treatment, biographers say. After van Gogh’s death in July 1890, the painting passed to a Parisian collector, and then, in 1911, as the artist’s fame was rising, to a Berlin art dealer. A series of German collectors owned it before A. Conger Goodyear, a Buffalo, New York, industrialist and co-founder of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, bought it in 1928. His son George later granted partial ownership to Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery, which displayed it for nearly three decades.

In May 1990, capping years of record-breaking prices for van Goghs, a Japanese businessman spent $82.5 million for “Portrait of Dr. Gachet” at Christie’s, then the highest price paid at auction for any artwork. About that time, Goodyear wanted to sell the 26-by-20-inch still life to raise money for another museum. It failed to sell at Christie’s in November 1990, where it had been expected to fetch between $12 million and $16 million. Soon after, a lower offer was accepted from a buyer who remained anonymous.

Most of the 400 or so oil paintings van Gogh produced during his last years — considered his best work — are at arts institutions around the world. About 15% are in private hands and not regularly on loan to museums. In the past decade, just 16 have been offered at auction, according to Artnet, an industry database. Among them was “Orchard With Cypresses,” from the collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, which Christie’s sold last year for $117 million to an undisclosed buyer.

The Producer and the Billionaire

For a year after the November 2014 auction, Wang kept the still life at his $25 million apartment in Hong Kong. In October 2015, the film producer was the guest of honor at a five-day exhibition in the city. An amateur artist, he had more than a dozen of his own oil paintings on display. But the main attractions were the van Gogh and a Picasso he had recently bought, “Woman With a Hairbun on a Sofa.” Sotheby’s said Wang had paid nearly $30 million for the work. Until then, Japanese industrialists, followed by American hedge fund managers and Russian oligarchs, had captured headlines for record-breaking purchases. Around 2012, newly rich Chinese buyers, who had benefited from their country’s market-opening policies, came on the scene. “All the auction houses really jumped on that,” said David Norman, who headed Sotheby’s impressionist and modern art department when the van Gogh was sold.

Chinese billionaires were often delighted to announce their big-ticket purchases. In 2013, a retail magnate bought a Picasso for $28 million at Christie’s, following up with a $20 million Claude Monet at Sotheby’s in 2015. The same year, a stock investor spent $170 million at Christie’s for an Amedeo Modigliani. “It is a combination of vanity, investment and building their own brand,” said Kejia Wu, who taught at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and is the author of a new book on China’s art market. Wang, 63, basked in the spotlight. In interviews, he spoke of his admiration for van Gogh and the artist’s influence on him. “Few people in the world would buy this kind of painting — there aren’t that many who love impressionist art this much and can afford it, right?” Days after the hammer fell at Sotheby’s, Wang had told a Chinese publication that he had not bought the painting alone, although he offered no details. Later, he no longer mentioned any partner. “When I saw the painting at a preview, I just felt like owning it — it stirred my heart,” he said in an interview published on Sotheby’s website. The high-profile acquisition, made through an intermediary and with the ultimate source of funds remaining a secret, is the kind of transaction governments have been trying to curb in recent years.

In one scandal, the United States charged a Malaysian businessman with laundering billions of dollars from a state development fund, using some of it to buy art at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. In 2020, the Senate issued a scathing report on how auction houses and art dealers had unwittingly helped Russians evade sanctions by allowing others to buy art for them. A spokesperson for Sotheby’s said it vetted all buyers and, when necessary, enlisted its compliance department for “enhanced due diligence.” Sotheby’s applies worldwide a 2020 European Union rule that requires auction houses to verify the legitimacy of funds. Although the financial documents involving the van Gogh do not show wrongdoing, the transaction was hardly routine. Soon after the auction, Sotheby’s transferred ownership of the painting to the Shanghai man, neither a known art agent nor a collector, who paid the bill. But in a public ceremony, Sotheby’s handed over the painting not to him or the billionaire who employed him but to the producer, Wang. “There’s a connection to someone who is now incarcerated,” said Leila Amineddoleh, a New York-based art lawyer. “Something unusual is going on.”

‘White Gloves’
The man Sotheby’s considers the owner of the van Gogh lives in a Shanghai apartment complex where gray tiles and grimy grout frame a weather-beaten door. A mat out front states nine times, in English, “I am an artist.” The occupant, Liu Hailong, is listed as the sole owner and lone director of the shell company in the British Virgin Islands that paid for the painting: Islandwide Holdings Limited. Other than his date and place of birth, little is known about Liu, 46. When a reporter recently showed him the Sotheby’s invoice and a bank wire document and asked whether the signature was his, he said, “Please leave immediately,” and shut the door. A woman living with him, Zhao Tingting, has her own connection to the jailed billionaire, Xiao. She was once a top official at a company he co-founded, which had business dealings with relatives of China’s top leader, Xi Jinping. Zhao, 43, who no longer holds that position, now teaches piano. Asked about Liu’s purchase of the van Gogh, she responded, “Do you think our house comes close to the price of that painting?”

She and Liu were “just ordinary little employees,” she said, with no connection to the Tomorrow Group, the collection of companies controlled by the billionaire. “We have no right to make any decisions and no right to know anything.” The couple appear to have been “white gloves,” a term used in China to describe proxy shareholders meant to hide companies’ true owners. Among the thousands of pages of records providing details about the Tomorrow Group is a spreadsheet listing dozens of such people. At least four offshore companies were registered in Liu’s name. Those companies were part of Xiao’s vast enterprise. He had showed early promise, gaining admission to China’s prestigious Peking University at age 14 and serving as a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen protests. He sided with the government, an allegiance that would help him become one of the country’s richest men, acquiring control of banks, insurers and brokerages, as well as stakes in coal, cement and real estate. Unlike the many brash billionaires with whom he did business, Xiao preferred to operate in the shadows, building ties to some of China’s princelings. He settled into a quiet life at the Four Seasons, where a coterie of female bodyguards attended to his needs. Why one of his lieutenants paid for the van Gogh is not clear. Wang, the producer, was among the ranks of China’s wealthiest people, though not nearly as rich as Xiao.
Xiao’s easy access to money outside China through his offshore network allowed him to bypass the country’s strict currency controls; he may have acted as a kind of banker for Wang. The documents show that the two men were drawing up art investment plans the same month as the auction, but their joint venture, based in the Seychelles, wasn’t formed until a year later. Meanwhile, the two set up another offshore company, aimed at investing in film and television projects in North America. There could be another explanation for the payment: Xiao may have wanted to acquire an asset that could be transported across borders in a private jet, free from scrutiny by bank compliance officers and government regulators.

An Abduction, and a Vanishing Act
The fortunes of the men connected to the van Gogh purchase began to turn in 2015 with the crash of the Chinese stock market. Xi’s government blamed market manipulation by well-connected traders, and regulators wrested economic power back from the billionaires. Dozens of financiers disappeared, only to resurface in police custody. Art purchases became more discreet. In 2016, Oprah Winfrey sold a Gustav Klimt painting to an anonymous Chinese buyer for $150 million.
By early 2017, Xiao’s life as a free man was over. One night, about a half-dozen men put him in a wheelchair — he was not known to use one — covered his face and removed him from his Hong Kong apartment. He was taken to mainland China and eventually charged. Prosecutors claimed that his crimes dated back before 2014, the year the van Gogh was sold. He was sentenced last August to 13 years in prison for manipulating financial markets and bribing state officials. The court said Xiao and his company had misused more than $20 billion.

Government officials dismantled his companies in China. At some point, the British Virgin Islands business that bought the van Gogh changed hands and Liu was removed as its owner. For a while, Wang, the producer, maintained a high-flying lifestyle, opening a private museum in Beijing in 2017 that showcased the van Gogh and Picasso paintings for a few months. But the market value of his film studio, Huayi Brothers, vaporized as it backed flops. Wang let go much of his art collection and his Hong Kong home. Last year, the Beijing museum was sold off, along with a mansion that was tied to him in Beverly Hills, California. Wang and a spokesperson for his company did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Xiao could not be reached for comment in prison, although a family representative said the billionaire’s wife did not know of any involvement in the van Gogh purchase and was unfamiliar with Liu.

Van Gogh’s floral still life — a vibrant painting by one of the world’s most acclaimed artists — hasn’t been seen publicly for years. But there are reports that the artwork may be back on the market. Three people, including two former Sotheby’s executives and a New York art adviser, requesting anonymity, said the painting had been offered for private sale. Last year, the adviser viewed a written proposal to buy it for about $70 million. The art experts did not know whether the painting had sold or if concerns had been raised about the 2014 sale — a purchase by a onetime lieutenant to a now disgraced billionaire linked to a beleaguered film producer who claims the art belongs to him. “Nobody needs a $62 million van Gogh, and nobody wants to buy a lawsuit,” said Thomas Danziger, an art lawyer. “If there’s any question about the painting’s ownership, people will buy a different artwork — or another airplane.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
https://artdaily.cc/news/157846/The-mystery-of-the-disappearing-van-Gogh

Spanish Police Have Seized Five Fake Goya and Velázquez Paintings Supposedly Worth a Collective $84 Million The works will go on view in an exhibition of seized forgeries curated in conjunction with Spanish police.

Sarah Cascone, April 14, 2023

Diego Velázquez, Portrait of Mariana of Austria (1652–1653), detail. Collection of the Museo del Prado, Madrid. A recently seized forgery.

Spanish police have seized five Old Master forgeries that were being sold for a collective €76 million ($84 million). Four of the works were being marketed as the work of Francisco Goya, and the fifth as a Diego Velázquez. Investigators got wind of the paintings earlier this year, when the sellers were offering them to a number of art dealers, the London Times reported.

Police from the Patrimonio Histórico division confiscated the works on two separate raids in the coastal city of Valencia—the faux Velázquez on February 8, and the rest some weeks later. Authorities are investigating four suspects, who have been interviewed, but not arrested, CNN reported. The sellers had also allegedly produced fake provenance documents in the hopes of fooling potential collectors into believing these workers were the genuine article.

“The most important thing about this crime is that it devalues the work of our creative people, in this case, great painters in our history,” Gabriela Bravo, head of the regional government’s justice department, said in a statement, noting that art forgery is the fourth-most lucrative type of crime in Spain, after drugs, weapons, and prostitution.

Manuela Mena, a Goya specialist, and David Gimilio, an art technician at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia, have both confirmed that the works were forgeries—but it doesn’t seem like it was that difficult to tell. The priciest of the five works, at €50 million ($55 million) was a copy of Velazquez’s Portrait of Mariana of Austria, the composition cropped to show only her face. The full-length original was painted for the Spanish Royal Family, and is famously in the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

Two of the ersatz Goyas were also copies of works at the Prado, but by the 18th-century German artist Anton Rafael Mengs. Each priced at €7 million ($7.7 million), the works were based on details from Portrait of Charles IV and Portrait of María Luisa de Parma, Princess of Asturias.

The €8 million Blessing of Santa Rosa de Lima appears to be done in the style 17th-century Italian painters Carlo Maratta or Pietro Antonio de Pietri. The final forgery, titled Allegory of the Pillar of Zaragoza, “was a work of very low quality and not even done by a professional painter,” according to authorities. It had an asking price of €4 million ($4.4 million).

All the forgeries are believed to have originated with the same owner, a Valencia collector who died in 2020. The Patrimonio Histórico police have partnered with the Museu Valencià de la Illustració i de la Modernitat on an exhibition of 112 counterfeit artworks it has seized in recent years.

A recently seized forgery, offered as Blessing of Santa Rosa de Lima by Francisco Goya. It appears to be done in the style 17th-century Italian painters Carlo Maratta or Pietro Antonio de Pietri. A recently seized forgery, offered as Blessing of Santa Rosa de Lima by Francisco Goya. It appears to be done in the style 17th-century Italian painters Carlo Maratta or Pietro Antonio de Pietri.

The newly identified fakes will soon join the display, according to Spanish news outlet Vozpópuli. Titled “False: The art of deception or art deception,” the exhibition opened late last month and runs through September 3. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/spanish-police-seize-goya-velazquez-forgeries-2285486

An Auctioneer Has Confessed to Playing a Major Role in Producing Fake Basquiats Displayed at the Orlando Museum of Art Los Angeles auctioneer Michael Barzman pled guilty to lying to the FBI about creating the works.

Sarah Cascone, April 12, 2023

Installation view of the "Heroes & Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Thaddeus Mumford, Jr. Venice Collection" at the Orlando Museum of Art, 2022. Courtesy of the OMA.

The exhibition had one of those fairytale backstories: the Orlando Museum of Art had lucked into a storage unit full of previously unseen paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat, which it was showing to the public for the first time. Now, more than nine months after a dramatic FBI raid shuttered the exhibition “Heroes & Monsters,” which ran from February to June 2022, the truth is out. The paintings were not the work of the late street artist—whose work has sold for over $100 million at auction—but a series of forgeries by 45-year-old Los Angeles auctioneer Michael Barzman and an accomplice identified only as J.F.

On April 11, the United States attorney’s office for the Central District of California charged Barzman with making false statements to the FBI. He had previously denied both having painted the works or having had someone make them for him when speaking to the FBI in 2022. He has pled guilty to the charge, and faces up to five years in jail. “J.F. spent a maximum of 30 minutes on each image and as little as five minutes on others, and then gave them to [Barzman] to sell on eBay,” the plea agreement said, according to a statement from the attorney’s office. “[Barzman] and J.F. agreed to split the money that they made from selling the fraudulent paintings.”

The two are said to have created 20 to 30 fake works around 2012 that they attributed to the artist. Barzman, whose business was auctioning off the contents of abandoned storage units, concocted a fake provenance for the works: Basquiat was said to have sold the cardboard paintings to television screenwriter Thad Mumford for $5,000 in 1982. Decades later, Mumford was behind in rent payments on his storage unit, and its contents went up for auction. It was a compelling story, and it was one that inspired storage hunter William Force and his financial backer, Lee Mangin, to purchase the lot for $15,000. After a messy lawsuit surrounding one of its opinions, the Basquiat estate had shut down its authentication committee in 2012, making it difficult for Force and Magnin to get anyone to officially weigh in on the question of authenticity.

But the fake works nonetheless found champions in some art experts, including Basquiat scholar Jordana Moore Saggese and curator Diego Cortez, founding member of the Basquiat estate’s authentication committee who died in 2021. Both agreed the works looked legitimate (according to her affidavit, Moore Saggese in said she was paid $60,000 by the Basquiat artworks’ owners in 2017 to assess the paintings). Handwriting expert James Blanco also found that the works’ signatures were a match to that of the artist. Due to these factors, it seems that the Orlando Museum leadership was confident that everything was legitimate and the museum published an exhibition catalogue with new essays on the 25 works, and touting a 500 percent uptick in attendance driven by the show. Nevertheless, suspicion about the works arose quickly after the show opened in Orlando in February 2022. The main red flag was a FedEx logo on one of the pieces of cardboard—the company hadn’t introduced it until 1994, six years after Basquiat’s death. (The FBI’s Art Crime Team later confronted Barzman about one of the works, pointing out that one of the works had been painting over a mailing label with his name.)

The raid didn’t happen until June, less than a week before the show was set to close—but the FBI had been investigating the case for years.

Installation view of the "Heroes & Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Thaddeus Mumford, Jr. Venice Collection" at the Orlando Museum of Art, 2022. Courtesy of the OMA.

Mumford, it turned out, had told an FBI agent back in 2014 that he had never purchased any Basquiats or kept any in his storage unit. He even signed an FBI affidavit the year before he died in 2018, admitting that “at no time in the 1980s or at any other time did I meet with Jean-Michel Basquiat, and at no time did I acquire or purchase any paintings by him.” Following the FBI’s seizure of the suspect works, the museum fired Aaron De Groft as its director and chief executive. He has not been charged with any wrongdoing. The beleaguered institution has formed a “task force” to help rebuild the public’s trust following the fiasco.

An archived version of Barzman’s auction website stated that he “specialize[d] in storage auctions, abandoned property, buying gold and silver, collectibles, Hollywood memorabilia, classic cars, vintage instruments and more,” noting that “since 2015, Michael has been a bonded auctioneer & appraiser of rare memorabilia and collectibles.”

The FBI investigation into the case is still ongoing.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/auctioneer-orlando-museum-art-basquiat-2283954

Man Accused of Selling Faked Warhols Arrested After Wife Goes Missing

BY SHANTI ESCALANTE-DE MATTEI
January 10, 2023 2:16pm

One of the paintings Walshe sold to Revolver Gallery.

Brian Walshe, a Massachusetts man who was arrested after his wife went missing, is the subject of renewed scrutiny after the investigation into him brought back to light his alleged sales of fake Andy Warhol paintings.

In 2016, Walshe, with some assistance from his wife Ann, listed two paintings that they claimed were made by Warhol as a part of his 1979 “Shadows” series on eBay for a combined price of $100,000. According to the original complaint, written that same year by FBI special agent Kristin D. Koch, the item description of the paintings claimed that Walshe had “terribly overpaid” for the pair of paintings in a 2007 Christie’s auction for $240,000. He was offering them for $100,000 on eBay, he explained, because “it is much cheaper and because Christie’s won’t be able to auction our pieces till May 2017.”

Due to some dire financial need, Walshe was willing to offer the pieces for much less than they were worth. Walshe also wrote that the pieces were numbered and registered with the Warhol Foundation, and that they had additional provenance documents from Christie’s.

Two employees from Los Angeles’s Revolver Gallery flew to Boston, where Walshe resides, to pick up and pay for the two paintings, which they bought for a total of $80,000. One representative of the gallery waited in the car while an assistant went into the Four Seasons hotel to retrieve the paintings and hand over a cashiers check made out to Walshe’s business account.

The assistant couldn’t see the authentication stamps from the Warhol Foundation because a frame was covering the backs of the paintings. She sent a photo of the paintings to her boss, who was waiting in the car, and he approved the transaction. However, after the Revolver Gallery employees compared the pictures they had originally seen of the paintings on eBay to the works they had in their hands, they saw significant differences and demanded a refund.

In the coming months, Walshe would allegedly delay, and according to the complaint, he ended up sending only $30,000 of the $80,000 he owed Revolver Gallery. After some time, Revolver Gallery got the FBI involved.

Upon an investigation, the FBI found that Walshe was, in fact, in possession of two possibly authentic Warhol paintings that he had stolen from a South Korean friend he had made in the one year he attended Carnegie Mellon.

The FBI said that Walshe had offered to sell numerous works his friend held, including a porcelain statue from the Tang Dynasty, two Keith Haring Prints, and the two Warhol paintings in question. But after Walshe took them, his friend was never able to get back the two Warhols that Walshe had taken from him.

When Walshe posted the paintings for sale on eBay, he had allegedly taken pictures of these stolen paintings to land the deal with Revolver Gallery, but passed off two faked paintings to Revolver Gallery when it came time to sell. Although Walshe faces counts of wire fraud and other crimes, he has not yet been charged, in part because there is another case open against him that concerns whether he stole from his late father’s estate after destroying his father’s will, according to the New York Post.

Walshe’s wife, Ana, was declared missing by her company on January 4. Walshe was arrested and appeared in court on Monday after investigators found that he had violated the terms of his probation, reported Fox News.

Investigators found blood in the family basement and a damaged knife. They also found that Walshe went to Home Depot, a violation of his house probation, to purchase $450 worth of cleaning supplies and had Googled “how to dispose of a 115-pound woman’s body.” The Walshes have three young sons.

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/man-faked-warhols-arrested-after-wife-goes-missing-brian-walshe-1234653123/

Italian Police Confiscated a $4.2 Million Rubens Painting From a Genoa Exhibition as Part of a Fraud Investigation

A decade ago, the owners illegally exported the piece and staged fake sales abroad to boost its value, according to the Carabinieri.

Peter Paul Rubens, The resurrected Christ appears to his mother (c. 1612-16). Courtesy of the Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale. Last week, Italian police pulled a Peter Paul Rubens painting from a Genoa exhibition, citing an investigation into the artwork’s two owners, who have been accused of money laundering and illegal exportation.

Now, according to the Art Newspaper, the 17th-century canvas has been returned to the show, called “Rubens in Genoa.” However, the probe into the owners continues, as law enforcement officials look into how they allegedly smuggled the painting out of the country a decade ago in an elaborate plot to boost its market value.

At the heart of the case is The resurrected Christ appears to his mother (c. 1612-16), a six-foot-tall painting, attributed to Rubens and his workshop, that depicts the Madonna kneeling before Christ in a cobalt blue cloak. On view now alongside 18 other Rubens works in Genoa’s Doge’s Palace, it is insured for €4 million ($4.2 million).

The artwork’s current owners acquired the artwork from the noble Cambiaso family for €300,000 in 2012, according to the Carabinieri agency for the protection of cultural heritage in Genoa.

However, just two years later, in 2014, the purchasers, along with an accountant and his son, exported the piece to Prague by claiming it was created by an unknown Flemish artist and was worth only €25,000.

They are believed to have obtained an export certificate from an accomplice who worked at the superintendent export office in Pisa. That same office was temporarily shut down in 2019 due to “irregularities” in the issuance of other certificates, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported.

The four suspects then established companies abroad to stage fake sales of the Rubens painting in an attempt to bolster its worth.

In 2015, conservators controversially removed a layer of the painting’s surface to uncover a second woman between Christ and the Madonna, likely from an earlier iteration of the composition. “The figure in question will be the subject of further investigations,” the Carabinieri explained.

That’s a safe prediction, and not just because of the legal investigation surrounding the painting. Questions over whether Rubens was indeed the artist behind The resurrected Christ appears to his mother have been raised in recent years as well.

“No Genoese source and no document attests the reference to Rubens of the painting exhibited in Genoa,” Vittorio Sgarbi, an art historian now serving as Italy’s undersecretary to the culture minister, said in a statement to La Repubblica. He alluded to the “uncertain quality of the work” and noted that the “history of the art lived for three hundred years without this improbable Rubens.”

“I invite those who have carried out the preliminary investigations, who have led to the seizure of the work, to greater prudence and rigor in evaluations, to avoid embarrassing mistakes,” the undersecretary went on. “Criminal liability cannot be assumed for a controversial attribution, deviated from the illusory and presumed market value.”

In response, the Genoa show’s co-curator Anna Orlando said that “the work is not under discussion.” Orlando pointed out that the exhibition’s other organizer, Nils Büttner, is “the highest authority on Rubens in the world.”

Taylor Dafoe, January 4, 2023 https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-police-confiscate-rubens-painting-genoa-fraud-smuggling-2238331