The largest art forgery case of the 21st century.

In 2006 a thorough verification on the provenance of an artwork acquired at Lempertz auction house in Cologne by a trusted collector, led gallery director Sofia Komarova, to discover inconsistencies that ultimately revealed the largest art forgery scandal in Europe since 1945.

The long investigation that followed, conducted jointly with the German Police, revealed the identity of the forgers (Wolfgang and Helen Beltracchi) and exposed the unprecedented importance of the forgery. Dozens of artworks that were sold to private collectors and institutions for the past three decades, were identified as false. The forger's own estimate goes as high as three hundred, so far about seventy forged paintings have been identified in relations to this case.

This page provides information and archive from the Beltracchi trial period (2010 to 2013) as well as video and literature references.

For more information about the case, please contact us at info@avgallery.com.