Great forger Automatic translate
Very soon, a new painting “Art and Craft” will be released, telling the amazing story of one of the greatest falsifiers of all time, Mark Landis.
At the end of May 2008, the Oklahoma City Museum of Art received a watercolor sketch depicting a woman in a yellow dress with a red belt and blue shoes. In the lower right corner of the work stood the initials of L.V. - Louis Valtat, friend and ally of Henri Matisse. The sketch came along with a copy of the auction catalog page, which served as proof of its origin. Attached was a letter from a man named Mark Lendis. In the letter, the donor indicated that he asked to accept the work from his collection in memory of his father, captain-lieutenant Arthur Landis. It is interesting that Valtat’s work was already on display at the museum, and in order to make room next to it to demonstrate an unexpected gift, museum workers took a picture of Renoir himself from the wall.
Mark Lendis. Photo: Whitney Curtis
A month later, an elderly man in a dark suit, holding a briefcase, personally appeared in the museum to offer 5 more works from his collection. Matthew Leininger, curator of the museum, described the visitor as a strange and eccentric, in general, typical unknown collector. Later, when Linger took up the authenticity of the paintings donated by a generous philanthropist, he revealed that they were all fake. Renoir was immediately returned to his place in the museum.
The investigation, initiated by Lininger, revealed that Landis visited more than 50 museums and presented precious gifts to everyone in the form of works by famous artists, many museums receiving the same works. Some of them revealed a fake, others remained ignorant, which can be explained by the fact that the self-taught fraudster always chose artists of the "second plan", whose works are not so well known.
The great falsifier Landis, who traveled to the northern states of the United States, never claimed his artistic claims, and went down in history because the authorities still cannot charge him. This is simply explained - the “philanthropist” never demanded money for his gifts. A unique story worthy of being placed on http://travel-in-time.org/ , has been described in many publications, and now also transferred to the film. Mark Landis was directly involved in the filming. He told reporters about his hobby and even showed how he creates his work.