The Final Knoedler Forgery Lawsuit, Over a $5.5 Million Fake Rothko Has Been Settled, Closing the Book on a Sordid Drama

After more than eight years of legal wrangling over tens of
millions of dollars worth of forged artworks sold through the
now-shuttered Knoedler Gallery, the 10th and final federal lawsuit,
over a $5.5 million fake Mark Rothko, was settled earlier this
month.

The case was first filed in 2013 by the Lichtenstein-based Hilti
Family Trust, which purchased the painting in 2002. After reports
first started circulating around 2011 about authenticity
concerns for a trove of Abstract Expressionist paintings sold
through Knoedler, the trust submitted paint from their work for
forensic analysis, and learned that the work was a fake.

The case initially named a lengthy list of defendants, including
Knoedler Gallery, its former president, Ann Freedman, gallery owner
Michael Hammer, and his related company, 8-31 Holdings, as well as
Long Island dealer Glafira Rosales, the only person convicted in a
related criminal investigation, and Jose Carlos Bergantiños Diaz,
Rosales’s former partner, who reportedly hired Queens-based Chinese
painter Pei-Shen Qian to create the works.

Bergantiños-Diaz fled to Spain and has managed to avoid
extradition, while Qian has reportedly fled to China. Freedman
already settled by mid-July, the Art Newspaper
reported. By that time, the remaining defendants were Knoedler,
8-31 Holdings, and Hammer.

In mid-July, the presiding judge in the case, Paul Gardephe,
issued an order of dismissal, noting that “all claims herein have
been settled,” and that the case was dismissed “with prejudice.”
However, “if the settlement is not consummated within 45 days of
this order,” according to court papers, either party was entitled
to apply for “restoration of the action.”

Follow-up orders from Judge Gardephe issued on On August 7
and 8 contained no further detail about the terms of the
settlement. None of the attorneys for the plaintiffs or defendants
responded to request for comment.

End of an Era

The settlement marks the end of a drawn-out, high-stakes legal
saga that included only one case that made it to trial.

That case, filed in early 2016 by collector Domenico De
Sole, a Sotheby’s board member and former Gucci executive who had
also purchased a fake Rothko painting in 2004, eventually settled,
but not before a string of experts laid out a damning trail of
misinformation that showed how Knoedler had helped create a false
story about a mysterious collector, referred to as “Mr. X,” who had
amassed a trove of Abstract Expressionist paintings in the 1950s
and ’60s. The story was used to explain the lack of provenance, or
ownership history, of the paintings.

Forensic testing of many of the works showed that paints used to
create them were not commercially available at the time the
artworks were supposedly created. An investigation by the US
Justice Department eventually revealed that most, if not all, of
the works were created by Pei-Shen Qian at the behest of
Bergantiños-Diaz in Qian’s home in Queens. The works were subjected
to artificial aging techniques, including staining canvases with
tea bags to make them appear older.

Following the settlement of the 2016 trial, De Sole told artnet
News that when the forensic report first came back, Knoedler
officials “were insistent that this was not the case and that
it was authentic.”

“My point of view was, ‘Fine, if it’s authentic, give me my $8.3
million back and I’ll walk away. Now you can sell this authentic
Rothko for more than twice as much, $18 million, or whatever, and
you can make a huge profit,’” De Sole said. “When they absolutely
refused to do that, I knew that, one, the Rothko was definitely a
fake; and two, they knew for sure that it was a fake.”

The post The Final Knoedler Forgery Lawsuit, Over a $5.5
Million Fake Rothko Has Been Settled, Closing the Book on a Sordid
Drama appeared first on artnet News.