More on the Knoedler Forgeries

The NY Times has some good background on the artist involved in the Knoedler forgeries.  His name is Pei-Shen Qian, he is a 73 year old immigrant from China and lived in Queens.  He supposedly painted over 60 works which had been sold for $80 million, which were purported to be by and singed by artists such as Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell and Richard Diebenkorn .

The NY Times reports

According to the indictment and other court papers, Mr. Qian was discovered selling his art on the streets of Lower Manhattan in the early 1990s by Ms. Rosales’s boyfriend and business partner, an art dealer named Jose Carlos Bergantiños Diaz, who recruited him to make paintings in the style of celebrated Abstract Expressionists. The indictment does not name Mr. Bergantiños Diaz, but his identity is confirmed by other court records.

Over a period of 15 years, court papers claim, the painter, working out of his home studio and garage, churned out at least 63 drawings and paintings that carried the signatures of artistic giants like Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell and Richard Diebenkorn, and that Mr. Bergantiños Diaz and Ms. Rosales boasted were authentic. They were not copies of paintings, but were sold as newly “discovered” works by those artists.

Ms. Rosales sold or consigned the art to two elite Manhattan dealers, Knoedler & Company — New York City’s oldest gallery until it closed in 2011 — and a former Knoedler employee named Julian Weissman, who in turn sold them for millions of dollars to customers who placed their faith in the dealers’ reputations and the supporting words of some experts.

Ms. Rosales told the dealers that the vast majority of the paintings came from a collector who had inherited the works from his father and adamantly refused to be identified. Over time, this anonymous owner came to be referred to as “Secret Santa” and “Mr. X.”

Knoedler, its former president Ann Freedman and Mr. Weissman have repeatedly said they always believed the works to be authentic, despite the lack of documentation.

So far, Ms. Rosales is the only person who has been charged in connection with what prosecutors have described as a long-running fraud. They have not indicated that either Manhattan dealer was aware that the works, which have been displayed at international exhibitions, a museum and an American embassy, had recently been created across the East River.

Source: The NY Times