In the latest developments from last summer’s discovery of extensive fraud involving some of the most prominent members of Germany’s art world, a multimillion dollar civil lawsuit has been filed against the Cologne-based auction house Lempertz. The €2.8 million ($3.7 million) suit cites “Rotes Bild mit Pferden” a painting thought to be by early 20th-century Rheinland artist Heinrich Campendonk, which was purchased from a Lempertz auction in 2006 by Trasteco Ltd. after being touted by the house as the gem of its fall auction calendar. New allegations state that the work was actually created by master forger Wolfgang Beltracchi.
After having commissioned further tests on the painting in 2008, the buyer discovered that its white pigments contained titanium, a material not used until well after Campendonk’s death in 1957. Now the regional court in Cologne has called on four experts nominated by both Lempertz and Trasteco to evaluate whether the auction house bears blame in having overlooked obvious signs of forgery, or if they followed every standard procedure required to sell the work.
This series of legal actions was followed by a story in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung revealing that further Beltracchi forgeries had been found. This time, the works were initially attributed to French painter Marie Laurencin (1883-1956), but appear to be some of Beltracchi’s earliest works.
Die Zeit has also reported further on the remarkable network of fraudulent transactions that turned the Max Ernst Museum in the artist’s home city of Brühl, outside of Cologne, into a cash till for some of those at the top levels of its administration. From the beginning, alleges the paper, the Max Ernst Museum was a project built on politics and finance, not art. Despite warnings in the fall of 2004 that opening the museum was a huge financial risk, plans for the museum carried on. Heralding it as a success, Brühl's mayor, Michael Kreuzberg, was reelected.
In 2006, a painting, “La Forêt,” was shown in the grand hall of the museum for several months on curatorial advice from art historian Werner Spies. And in 2010, after being purchased by New York collector Daniel Filipacchi, it was proved a Beltracchi fake, opening a massive inquiry into perceived collusion. Allegedly, Spies earned a six-figure sum for his appraisal and curation of this and other purported Beltracchi fakes. Spies denied his complacency in the affair or lack of care in his professional services via his lawyer Peter Raue (who is also the co-founder of the Friends of the National Gallery). Yet, over the summer he admitted that he received a 7 to 8 percent commission for the sales of the fake paintings.
Documents that were submitted to Die Zeit further outline the monetary transactions involved. After each sale, almost exactly 8 percent of the purchase price was sent from an account Beltracchi kept at the Crèdit Andorrà bank to an account called “Imperia.” For example, €136,565.04 was sent to the Imperia account from Beltracchi two weeks after Marc Blondeau purchased a Max Ernst painting for €1.7 million. Despite this, Raue denies knowledge of the account’s existence.
In October of last year Beltracchi was sentenced to six years in prison, along with his wife and two accomplices. The sentence was based on an identified 14 fake pictures, though many more have been found in the aftermath that were not named in the initial indictment.