9 Arrested by Spanish Police on Suspicion of Selling Fake Art by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol and John Miro
In Spain, police have busted up a group that allegedly created and sold fake works of art to unsuspecting collectors.
According to The Associated Press, the brazen gang was trying to pass of works from such easily identifiable masters as pop artist Andy Warhol, the surrealist Joan Miro, and even the most famous painter of the 20th century Pablo Picasso.
The officers have arrested nine suspects in the eastern region of Valencia.
An Interior Ministry statement said the people arrested are both those who have allegedly created the fake art, as well as possible accomplices who helped the paintings be sold in galleries and online.
A complaint that art objects had been stolen from a Denia home led police to seven addresses, where 271 works were seized. Sculptures, canvasses and documents that were to be used to falsify the history of a piece were among the objects police found.
The alleged counterfeiters responsible for the fakes include three brothers and a couple. They have supposedly been producing fake art for seven years.
According to BBC, in 2013, six people in Germany and 18 in Israel were accused of taking part of an art forgery ring.
Wolfgang Beltracchi–a man who produced fake works by Fernand Léger, Georges Braque and Max Ernst–was sentenced to six years in prison in 2011. Beltracchi has since become a bit of a cultural antihero with books and a documentary about him garnering a large audience.
Of course, the peddling of fake art is nothing new.
In 1969, Elmyr de Hory, a Hungarian-born painter and art forge faked works by Matisse, Modigliani, Picasso and Renoir. He was the subject of a book by a journalist named Clifford Irving, according to the New York Times.
De Hory was the subject of a 1974 film by Orson Welles.
Finally convicted of art forgery in 1976, de Hory is even rumored to have perhaps faked his own death in order to avoid the penalties.
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