More Knoedler Lawsuits

The NY Times is reporting on two new lawsuits being filed against the now closed Knoedler & Co in New York City. In one suit a Clyfford Still is in question with the plaintiffs looking for over $1 million and the other is a mark Rothko with a value of $475,000.  Both paintings came to Knoelder through dealer Glafira Rosales. The article states there are now over a half dozen lawsuits against Knoedler and the paintings acquired through Rosales.

The NY Times reports

On Wednesday, two new suits were filed against the now-shuttered gallery Knoedler & Co., demanding reimbursement for forged works of art purchased there.

In one, the Manny Silverman Gallery in Los Angeles and Richard Feigen’s gallery in New York are asking to be repaid $1,050,000 for a painting that was sold as a work by Clyfford Still in 2000 as part of a three-way transaction with Knoedler.

The other, filed by Martin and Sharleen Cohen of Los Angeles, states that in October 1998, the couple bought a work said to be by Mark Rothko that turned out to be a fake. It was purchased for them from Knoedler by an intermediary, the Michelle Rosenfeld Gallery.

The Still and the Rothko paintings were part of a trove of counterfeit artworks supplied to Knoedler and another dealer, Julian Weissman, by Glafira Rosales, who pleaded guilty to fraud in September.

The Cohens also purchased what the court filing described as a fake de Kooning that had been provided to Knoedler by another admitted forger,Tony “Cha-cha” Masaccio. The Cohens are demanding to be repaid $475,000 plus interest for the two works.

More than a half dozen lawsuits have been filed against Knoedler in connection with artworks it received from Ms. Rosales. Both lawsuits name Ms. Rosales, her longtime partner Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz, the former president of Knoedler Ann Freedman and the gallery’s owner Michael Hammer as participating in a conspiracy to sell work that was actually created by a Chinese immigrant in Queens.

Mr. Silverman paid $850,000 to Knoedler for the fake attributed to Still; the Feigen gallery paid the Silverman gallery $925,000 for the work. Then Mr. Feigen, in turn, sold it to Stephen Robert, a collector, for $1,050,000.

After learning the painting was forged, the Feigen and Silverman galleries promptly refunded Mr. Robert’s money.

“That’s what a reputable gallery does,” the galleries’ lawyer, Gregory Clarick, said. “By stark contrast, to date, Knoedler, Freedman and Hammer have failed to take any steps to refund the tens of millions of dollars that they pocketed from the sale of Rosales collection fakes.”

Luke Nikas, Ms. Freedman’s lawyer, said: “This is yet another copycat lawsuit that ignores Ms. Freedman’s decade of diligence and the fact that these purchasers knew the exact risks associated with buying newly discovered works.”

Source: The NY Times