Sympathy grows for alleged forgers
Media has painted four defendants in fake art trial in a positive light
By Julia Michalska. From Market, Issue 229, November 2011
Published online: 03 November 2011
Cologne. The four protagonists in Germany’s biggest art forgery scandal were sentenced a total 15 years in prison on 27 October following charges of forgery and corruption in a Cologne court. The group duped leading art world figures into buying forgeries from the fictitious “Werner Jägers” and “Wilhelm Knops” collections by artists including Max Ernst, André Derain and Fernand Léger. Ringleader Wolfgang Beltracchi, his wife Helene, her sister, Jeanette, as well as Otto Schulte-Kellinghaus, all confessed to their involvement in creating and selling 14 forgeries, which earned them an estimated €16m over the past decade. Beltracchi was given a six year sentence, his wife a four-year term, her sister—named as Jeanette S—a 21-month suspended sentence; and their associate, Otto Schulte-Kellinghaus, a five-year term.
German auction house Lempertz, Max Ernst expert Werner Spies and art dealer Jacques de la Béraudiere are facing civil lawsuits and compensation claims from their clients. Beltracchi’s forgeries continue to be uncovered—most recently a painting in Hannover’s Sprengel Museum, Katze in Berglandschaft, said to be by Heinrich Campendonk.
“Masterly forgeries”
While the case has sent shockwaves through the art world, German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau calls the group a “nice family of counterfeiters”, and most media outlets, from the local newspaper Badische Zeitung to the popular weekly magazine Der Spiegel, have been calling Beltracchi a filou, or rogue. Die Welt says that the “likeable” Beltracchi deserves our applause for his masterly forgeries, while an opinion piece in Die Zeit calls for an exhibition of the fakes. The Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) says that Beltracchi “painted the best Campendonk that ever was”.
Plea bargain
During the trial, Beltracchi described his early beginnings when he forged a Picasso in two hours as a 14-year-old boy, his faltering career as an artist and the “fun” he experienced in deceiving the art world, finally delivering a scathing attack on the art market: “You have to know where the greed is greatest.” His confession, along with those of the three other defendants, formed part of a plea bargain that will see their sentences reduced and the case expedited. The trial was due to end as we went to press.
“Art forgery is the most moral way to embezzle €16m,” said FAZ. Der Spiegel expressed little sympathy for the art market: “compared with crooked bankers, Beltracchi and his co-conspirators haven’t swindled common people out of their savings, but rather people who may have wanted to be deceived. Therefore the [expected] sentences are not inappropriately mild, but rather the opposite.”
Schadenfreude
Robert Ketterer, the owner of German auction house Ketterer Kunst, said there is a general sense of schadenfreude about the art market. “The lack of transparency often leads people to believe that intrigues are going on behind the scenes, which they feel have now been exposed. In a Robin Hood kind of way, the Beltracchis have taken money out of the pockets of the rich. They have shown up the art market.”
Those on the receiving end are less forgiving. Art dealer Wolfgang Henze, who bought a fake Max Pechstein painting from Lempertz in 2003, says he is astonished that the ¬public has fallen for Beltracchi’s “Albrecht Dürer Christ act”, and has branded the German media’s reaction to the case “disgusting”.
None of the 178 planned witnesses will now take the stand and the full extent of the fraud will most likely remain a mystery.
To see how good the forgeries were, see our online picture gallery.
