Knoedler Gallery Fraud
I know we just did a fraud case but there’s something so fascinating about being able to fool people whose JOB it is to recognize and appraise authentic art. This time we have New York’s Knoedler Gallery at the centre of the story and over two dozen fake works. Let’s discuss.
Knoedler Gallery
This historic gallery can trace its roots all the way back to 1846 when French print-publishing house Goupil & Cie opened a New York location. Michael Knoedler moved to New York to take charge of the branch and later bought the American arm of the business outright in 1857. Knoedler worked with dealer Charles Carstairs to open branches of his own in Paris, Pittsburgh, and London and they developed a reputation for being leading dealers in Old Masters paintings. Their customers included wealthy and important collectors and museums such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Louvre, and The Tate Gallery.
The company passed through more generations of Knoedlers and was finally sold in 1971 for $2.5 million to industrialist and collector Armand Hammer (actor Armie Hammer’s great-grandpa). It focused increasingly on contemporary art, as opposed to old masters, through the 1970s. After Hammer’s death in 1990, the Hammer Foundation retained a controlling interest until the gallery closed in 2011 when Michael Armand Hammer (Armie Hammer’s dad) was the chairman.
Interestingly enough fraud charges aren’t the only thing that got the gallery in hot water over the years. Long before any of those, the gallery was involved in a couple of high profile lawsuits involving Nazi-looted art. The works in question were a Matisse stolen in 1941 from the Rosenberg family and an El Greco stolen in 1944. Both paintings were restituted after the lawsuits were brought against the gallery.
Enough background, let’s get to the point.
The Story
The main event here is obviously the fraud. So as I said, the gallery closed in 2011 but before that, in 2009, the gallery’s president Ann Freedman resigned suddenly. There were rumours at that time that she was resigning because of some forged paintings being sold and passed off as the real deal. But no one knew the true extent of what had really been going on. The gallery tried to keep it this way by releasing a statement saying that Freedman resigned and the gallery was closing for unrelated business reasons. I don’t know who would buy that but worth a shot I guess.
The truth is that the Knoedler Gallery had at least two dozen paintings, either sold or for sale, that were under investigation by the FBI for fraud.
After doing a bunch of research into this I don’t have every single detail and a lot of information came out in the trial that I will be piecing together so please bear with me.
Going back in time a little bit, under Freedman it appeared that the gallery was prospering. However, the year she took over as president was the year that she met with Glafira Rosales for the first time. Rosales wasn’t a name known by anyone in the art world. Freedman had never met or even heard of Rosales either before she came into the gallery in 1994, she had ZERO reason to trust her. Apparently, she brought Freedman some incredible paintings, claiming that they were by contemporary artists like Jackon Pollock and Mark Rothko. But she failed to provide Freedman with any documentation, like receipts, sales records, or photographs, to authenticate them. Of course, Rosales was offering these paintings to Freedman at “bargain basement prices” and Freedman could make absolutely massive profits from them. This is NOT NORMAL, no one is going to sell these extremely famous artists’ works for nothing it just would never happen.
The truth is, of course, that Rosales was working with an artist (sort of a Myatt and Drewe situation) named Pei-Shen Qian who was working out of a garage in Queens New York. He created paintings in the style of Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, and Richard Diebenkorn, giving them the illusion of age using tea and dirt from the vacuum cleaner.
The big question that emerges at this point is, did Freedman know that she was buying fakes or not?
At the trial, Luke Nikas, Freedman’s lawyer, claimed that his client had done a thorough vetting process for each of the works she purchased from Rosales and she believed them to be real, therefore she wasn’t at fault here. Highly sus. He also claimed that as part of the vetting process Freedman consulted with leading experts in the art world like conservators, historians, and connoisseurs, who all believed the works to be authentic. But did she?
This claim that experts authenticated these paintings is where things get a little sticky for Freedman. For example, in 2004 a couple purchased a ‘Rothko’ painting from the Knoedler Gallery for $8.3 million USD. Freedman had ‘authenticated’ this piece and had documentation to show that experts and even Rothko’s own son had stated that this painting was the real deal. In the trial, these named experts came forward to say WTF we never said that. Freedman quoted Dr. David Anfam, a noted Rothko expert, in a letter saying that Anfam called the painting beautiful. Under oath, at the trial, Anfam denied ever even being in the same room as the painting, “I’ve never seen the painting itself”, he said adding that if asked, he would not have allowed his name to be placed [in the letter] because “it would constitute a proxy authentication” (Artlyst, 2021). Oof. Not looking good for Freedman. A similar statement was made by Christopher Rothko, Mark Rothko’s son, who was very unhappy that Freedman had stated in another letter that he saw the forgery and said that he was immediately convinced and that the work was of the highest quality. Rothko says that he never said these things. Double oof. Looks to me like she knew they were fakes or at least suspected they were, otherwise why lie about their authenticity to potential buyers?
Another very shady detail that came to light during the trial was that Freedman didn’t even know where these paintings were coming from. If we believe for a moment that she thought they were real she should have asked which collector was selling them or where they were from. There are only a finite number of Rothkos in the world, they’re not just popping up all over the place. Rosales told her that the collector was very secretive and didn’t wish to be publicly known but had made his money in sugar and that he had obtained these works directly from the artists’ studios. Freedman frequently referred to him as Mr. X or Secret Santa (!!!).
So to recap, we have an unknown woman coming into the Knoedler one day with paintings to sell from some of the most famous abstract expressionist artists. She tells Freedman that they come from a mysterious old rich guy who wants to sell them but has no documentation or proof that they’re real. Freedman pays super low prices and then turns around and sells them for millions with her faked authentication letters. She is then confused when it turns out they were all forged and tries to say that she had no idea and was herself duped by Rosales. That doesn’t sit right with me.
In the words of M.H. Miller of the New York Times, “either Freedman was complicit in it, or she was one of the stupidest people ever to have worked in an art gallery” (Artlyst, 2021). Can’t say I disagree with that. “One could argue that Freedman was blinded by greed and under pressure to reach targets. She seemingly turned a blind eye to the obvious, and that was that the paintings were modern forgeries” (Artlyst, 2021).
So, What Happened to Them?
We already know there were numerous lawsuits over art forgeries being sold by the Knoedler Gallery. There were 10 to be exact. These included a Jackson Pollack purchased for $2 million where the gallery gave the buyer his money back to try and keep this under wraps. Another Pollack painting sold for $17 million, this case was settled out of court. The fake Rothko we discussed, sold for $8.3 million which went to trial but ultimately ended in a settlement. And a Willem de Kooning purchased for $4 million which was also settled out of court.
The important settlement here is the one concerning the lawsuit surrounding the fake Rothko. The settlement happened literally the day before Freedman would have taken the stand at the trial. Convenient. She was never cross-examined, convicted or sentenced to any time or punishment whatsoever for her role in this crime. To this day she insists that she is the ‘central victim’ and that she always believed that the paintings were real. She is still working as an art dealer. Wonder how that’s going for her.
Rosales admitted in 2013 that every single painting she brought to Knoedler was a forgery done by Pei-Shen Qian in Queens. She is the only person who has been tried and sentenced in relation to these crimes and it’s honestly very anticlimactic. Since she cooperated with the government by admitting to all the forgeries she only ended up serving three months in jail along with nine months of house arrest and three years of probation. She was also ordered to pay $81 million to the victims of the fraud scheme but I couldn’t find anywhere if she actually paid or not.
As for the artist himself, Qian fled to China when he realized that they were caught. The American government was unable to extradite him to face trial and therefore he has never been punished for his role.
Obviously, this is another very sad story about people being driven by greed and not taking into account the damage they’re inflicting on the art world in general. The silver lining here is that people who actually care about art are less likely to be duped in the future, they see what forgers are able to do and they know what to look out for and how to properly verify the authenticity of works (though if you ask me they should have already known). Hopefully, this information coming out helps minimize the number of successful frauds like this moving forward.
Works Cited
“Duped You: The Story of Knoedler’s $80m Art Fraud - Netflix”. Artlyst. 2021. https://www.artlyst.com/news/duped-story-knoedlers-80m-art-fraud-netflix/#:~:text=It%20charts%20the%20demise%20of,De%20Sole%2C%20who%20purchased%20one.&text=M
Miller, M.H. “The Big Fake: Behind the Scenes of Knoedler Gallery’s Downfall”. Art News. 2016. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/artists/the-big-fake-behind-the-scenes-of-knoedler-gallerys-downfall-6179/