Thomas Zambito of The Daily News is reporting on a NY art dealer being arrested for selling fake/fraudulent art, including works by Matisse and Calder.The article is short, so I just cut and pasted:
A New York art gallery owner was nabbed Friday for commissioning dozens of knockoffs of Matisse, Calder and others that he passed off as the real thing. Giuseppe Concepcion was arrested in Florida on charges of trafficking in phony artwork and scheming to dupe clients, Manhattan federal prosecutors say. Concepcion owns the Prorate galleries in New York and Miami. The feds say Concepcion purchased authentic works of art by Henri Matisse, Alexander Calder, Tom Wesselman and then commissioned forgeries he sold to victims, complete with bogus documents verifying their authenticity. In August 2005, Concepcion sold a 1969 oil painting by Calder to a Greenwich, Conn., man who gave Concepcion his 2004 Bentley as partial payment for the $180,000 price tag, FBI Special Agent James Wynne said in legal papers filed yesterday in Manhattan Federal Court. Experts at the Calder Foundation determined that painting, and 14 others the Connecticut man bought, were fakes, Wynne said. In November 2006, Concepcion sold a $125,000 knockoff Chagall watercolor titled "Fleurs Rouges Et Bleues," the feds say. The New York-based Comite Chagall determined the painting and its certificate of authenticity were fakes.
Let the buyer and the appraiser beware!
