2/25/2012

More on Knoedler


The NY Times just ran a good article on the supposed fakes which have recently come out of Knoedler.  The article is centered on Glafira Rosales, an art dealer from Long Island who over the couple of decades supplied paintings to Knoedler.  Now many of those paintings authenticity are being questioned.

It is a very interesting story and well worth the few minutes to read.


The NY Times reports

All of them were new to the market. All were said to have come from a collector whom Ms. Rosales refused to name.

The paintings were embraced by Knoedler and Ms. Freedman, who handled at least 20 of them, including one she sold for $17 million.

But now several experts have called the works fakes. One has been formally branded a forgery in a court settlement, and the F.B.I. is investigating. Knoedler, after 165 years in business, has shut its doors and is being sued by a client who bought one of the Rosales works. (The gallery said the closing was a business decision unconnected to the lawsuit.) Ms. Freedman, who maintains that the paintings are authentic, was also named in the suit.

Few cases in recent years have roiled the art market as much as this mystery of how an obscure art merchant could have discovered an astonishing number of unknown treasures by the titans of Abstract Expressionism. Each explanation carries its own burden of implausibility.

If they are real, why do some contain pigments that had not been invented at the listed time of their creation?

If they are fakes, who are these preternaturally talented forgers who have been able to confound experts?

And if they are real but stolen, why haven’t their owners come forward to claim them now that the story is public?
Source: The New York Times 

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