Wolfgang & Helene Beltracchi

Master forgers

The Beltracchis in their current studio in Meggen.

The Beltracchi story

For over 40 years, Wolfgang Beltracchi (born 1951), an artist with undoubted talent, painted 300+ pictures in the style of famous painters of the early 20th century. His works duped the art world, reputable art experts and galleries, and even some of the artists’ families.

He and his wife Helene would meticulously research the artist he was forging. They scoured antique markets for old picture frames, carefully preserving even the dust that escaped from the frames.

Beltracchi painted works that did not exist, but could very well have existed. His crime was that he forged the signatures of artists such as Georges Braque, André Derain, Max Ernst and Heinrich Campendonk on the paintings that he himself had painted in their style.

He claimed he went into forgery when he found it was far easier to sell a forged work with a big name artist signature for $50,000 than it was to sell a painting under his own name for just $5,000.

His wife Helene sold the works to gallery owners and auction houses using the fictional story of her grandfather Werner Jäger who was said to have been an art collector.

Photo above: Helene Beltracchi posing as her grandmother with forged works hanging on the wall behind as 'proof' of ownership

No one questioned the lie. Everyone in the world of art who heard this story wanted to believe it, even the so-called experts.

Buyers (big art galleries and auction houses) paid large sums for his forged works after their in-house experts had 'validated' them, and later sold them at their auctions for significantly higher amounts.

The Beltracchi's became rich, but many middlemen earned much, much more from his paintings.

The Beltracchis saw the whole art market as a fraudulent business and in their view, they were merely cheating those who made a living by cheating others.

Their fraud was uncovered in 2010 when technical analysis showed that a Campendonk painting contained traces of titanium white that had not existed in 1914 when the painting was supposed to have been created.

Beltracchi's paintings on display in the court room during his trial.

Beltracchi was sentenced to 6 years and Helene to 4 years in prison, and they had to pay a huge fine that effectively bankrupted them.

They offered to buy back the paintings they had sold to big art dealers but most preferred to remain silent.

Of the 300-odd paintings the Beltracchi's sold, only 70 have been openly identified leaving many paintings in galleries around the world incorrectly assigned!