2023-08-07 13:30:22
antonio lopez directs the Heritage Group of the Generalitat Police, a unit that since its creation in 2014 has seized nearly 5,700 false works of art that had been put -or were intended to be put- on the market as real with a value of almost 250 million euros. “It is wrong to say it, but today we are the ones that intervene in the most works at the national level,” he points out. Part of the work of this group is shown in ‘Fals’, one of the most successful exhibitions of the MuVIM in recent years and which, by the way, exhibits a painting that is true. Let’s see who finds it.
Lopez works at the Pont de Fusta police station surrounded by canvases and sculptures (all of them false), although his relationship with art is relatively recent. “I spent about 27 years in the force and since 2000 in the investigation groups and I have touched all the sticks: homicides, prostitution… But in 2014 they offered me to lead this group and I had to take training based on courses and a heritage master.
Is counterfeiting an art?
Unlike Orson Welles, López does not consider that fake art is in itself art, although he acknowledges that “there are counterfeiters who have more artistic quality than the counterfeit artist”. “But if you fake it, it’s because his work is more valued than yours,” he adds.
He also believes that with fake art “they swindle us, more than we let ourselves be swindled” because “who is going to want a fake work of art, which has no value and with which you can commit a crime if you try to sell it or leave it as an inheritance?”.
But he also acknowledges that surely there are people who don’t mind having a fake Picasso if others think it’s real. “And there are people, from counterfeiters to sellers to historians who issue certificates, who take advantage of that.” Add.
López assures that it is “practically impossible” to find a real Sorolla in a flea market or run into a real Velázquez in an antique shop. “There are families who think that they have inherited a work of art of great value and when they try to sell it is when we usually intervene and we can detect that practically the entire collection that they thought was worth millions has no value.”
Of course, when they have to break the news to the family that the inherited painting with which they thought to buy a villa in Dénia is not worth even to get a bicycle, the disgust is usually important. “I remember one in the Benidorm area back in 2015 when two people who are in financial difficulties decided to put up for sale a Picasso for which they had spent 30 million euros a few years before. They went to the Picasso Museum in Malaga and there they already They said that painting had nothing to do with Picasso’s style or signature”.
And what did the scammers do in this case? Well, as López says, the same thing that many people tend to do when they get a counterfeit bill: “Try to recover the capital. Market it through the Internet or dealers or antique dealers who know where to place this type of false work… That’s what first thing that puts us on the track of false works: the way in which they try to sell”.
Too many documents
Precisely, more than the obvious or not of the forgery, what puts the agents of the Heritage Group on alert the most is the way in which a suspicious work is marketed.
“There are families of counterfeiters who have been dedicating themselves to it for several generations and who have more knowledge than certain museum restorers,” says López. Modigliani and he puts the signature on it and you don’t realize it’s fake until you put the infrared on it or discover that the white they used didn’t appear until after the death of the Italian painter”.
But when the agents hear that such an antique dealer has a Goya or that an internet page offers you a Genovese at an abnormally low price, they can’t help but first smile and then get to work.
“Another thing that makes us quite suspicious is if the pieces are accompanied by a lot of documentation to demonstrate their supposed authenticity -adds the sub-inspector-. People think that if they are backed by notarial documents, that all they do is certify the property, or by an authorization from the ministry, which the only thing that determines is whether it can be marketed, they think that this is how authenticity is accredited”.
The endorsement of the experts does not have to be a mark of anything either. “There are historians who have been fired from important museums such as El Prado who are later dedicated to saying if a work is by Goya or Titian and charging for each report -López warns-. And there are appraisal certificates, which the only thing they tell you It’s that due to the type of author and work, it would be worth I don’t know how many millions, but it doesn’t tell you if it’s original or not. Or a pigment test, which tells you that it may be from Goya’s time but not Goya’s”.
Benliure without Benliure
In the Valencian area, López points out that the most falsified is local art, that is, Sorolla, Pinazo, Los Segrelles or Benlliure. Regarding the latter, the sub-inspector recalls that there was a Valencian company, Vicent García Editores, which came to market some of his supposed sculptures accompanied by certificates of authenticity signed by Benlliure himself and that hundreds of Valencian families bought them.
“The problem is that Benlliure never made a series of sculptures and, above all, that he had already died when he supposedly signed the certifications,” concludes the policeman, who also recalls that one of the sculptor’s grandsons, Enrique, also dedicated himself to forging the work of his grandfather.
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