Wolfgang and Helene Beltracchi are a German couple who gained notoriety for deceiving the art market for years by creating masterful forgeries.
Husband and wife, Wolfgang and Helene, as their story shows, are truly inseparable: they became millionaires thanks to his artistic skills in creating works of artists like Picasso, Cezanne, Rembrandt, and Ernst, while she has been the perfect partner in her husband’s illicit dealings.
The Story
We know that forgeries are certainly not a novelty in the art world, but the story of the Beltracchi couple has twists reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde.
The artist among the two is Wolfgang Beltracchi, the actual creator of the works.
His career as a forger actually began very early, at the age of 14, when he first copied a work by Picasso. After attending an art school in Aachen, he opened an art gallery with a partner.
The business was short-lived; Beltracchi was accused of theft, and the gallery closed.
The fact is that Wolfgang never gave up.
On the contrary, he maximized his potential as an artist and officially started his forgery business.
He deserves credit for never copying existing works but for creating new ones consistent with the style of the chosen artists. The works, created with meticulous precision, were “authenticated” with phantom photos in industry catalogs or hypothetical provenance from prestigious collections that could certainly not be disputed.
Everyone fell for it, even Christie’s, which in 2006 included a work signed by Ernst, titled The Horde, in an auction, with a low estimate of £2,500,000 and a high estimate of £3,500,000.
Well, the work was by Beltracchi.
The Conviction and Success as an Artist
After years of illicit but certainly lucrative dealings, in 2010 Wolfgang made that one mistake that cost him, along with his wife Helene, a sentence of six and four years in prison, respectively.
Indeed, during examinations of a canvas by Campendonk, the use of a white that had not yet been commercially available in 1917, the year the canvas was supposedly created, was detected.
Game over for the Beltracchi couple, but only for a few years. Once they served their time, they got back into business.
Wolfgang, for whom the only thing to regret is having used the wrong white, has become an established artist.
He paints and signs – in his own name this time – the works, which he successfully sells for amounts reaching 250,000-300,000 euros.
