Sunday, March 23, 2008

Markets in Everything?? Rampant Art Fraud

Everyone with a genuine Miro or Picasso print take a step forward. Not so fast, buddy!!

A ring of art counterfeiters has sold thousands of prints since 1999 bearing the forged signatures of Picasso, Miro, Dali and other famous artists to buyers around the world.

"Thousands of people will learn they ... bought a fake," said Chicago-based U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who announced indictments on Wednesday charging two Americans, a Spaniard from Barcelona, and two Italians from Milan and Monsummano with multiple counts of fraud.

U.S. authorities will seek to extradite the Europeans.

Sale prices ranged up to $50,000 for counterfeit prints that came with forged artists' signatures and fake certificates of authenticity that were sold in galleries, at art shows and through Internet auction site eBay, Fitzgerald said.

The counterfeits were produced in Spain and Italy, with the volume of fakes such that two of the alleged conspirators warned another one not to flood the market.

I am pretty sure that Picasso and Miro fakes have been abundant well before 1999, both because they are in high demand and because they are so easy to fake!! My advice is to collect original art by up and coming people and leave the famous artist print market to the crowds. Mrs. Angus and I started out in prints but have been moving more and more toward originals. Anybody want to buy a nice pair of Howard Hodgkin prints?

2 comments:

newbigprinz said...

Hold on there Angus. I got the real deal in 1987 from Art and Fran after graduating from GMU. You can't simply fake a Miro. Oh, it sounds easy, but it ain't! Arshile Gorky tried. Great, but he isn't Joan.

Tooker is another story.

Really, who other than Miro can do this:

http://tinyurl.com/29ha9x

newbigprinz

Anonymous said...

There is a new site with information on ART FRAUD that is related to this. www.art-fraud.org There are pictures of the fake Picasso, Dali, Chagall, Miro etc.