Trial begins in $80m fake art fraud, one of the biggest in art world history

Pei-Shen Qian, a 76-year old Chinese painter, painted copies of Rothko, Pollock and Kooning's work for 20 years while he was living in the Queens. He wanted everyday folk to be able to hang paintings on their walls they wouldn't otherwise be able to afford. Husband-and-wife art dealers Glafira Rosales and Jose Carlos Bergantiños Diaz, however, paid Qian up to $7,000 per painting and then sold his paintings on to the biggest galleries in the world, such as the Knoedler Gallery, for millions of dollars.

But how did this woman and her husband fool Knoedler & Co, one of the oldest commercial art galleries in the world? 

This is the question Maria Konnikova is trying to answer in her latest book The Confidence Game. She tells the story of how Rosales met the Knoedler Gallery's director, Ann Freedman, through an acquaintance in the early 90's, and convinced her that the Rothko she had in her hands was genuine by fabricating a convincing back story, which in hindsight does not sound more credible than the email scams you're getting every day from late Nigerian officials' spouses.

Ann Friedman, former director of the Knoedler Gallery

What's more impressive is that Qian's paintings themselves fooled the so-called experts in their fields. David Anfam, the world's foremost Rothko specialist, Stephen Polcari, an Abstract Expressionist specialist, both assured Freedman that the Rothko she was considering auctioning was "right". Even Rothko's son, Christopher, loved it!

You can read an edited extract from this book here.

The chain of events that followed brought the end of Knoedler & Company, which had been in business since 1846, never stopped according to a Vanity Fair article from 2012 - not even during Civil War, World War I, World War II, or 9/11, and as NY Times reports has sold more than 30 fake paintings. After years of undisclosed settlements, one of the most startling cases of fraud in art world history went to trial on Monday, January 25. Here are the 8 key points to know about this trial.

I will be keenly following the Knoedler trial and share with you what comes out as the story unravels.

Ekin Caglar
26 January 2016