Ex-Knoedler Employees Accused of Selling Fake Motherwells

Anne Freedman and Julian Weissman both once worked at Knoedler and seem to have also used their contacts to sell forged works by Robert Motherwell and, possibly, Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. The forgeries came to light through a lawsuit involving Motherwell’s Dedalus Foundation, according to the New York Post:

The foundation charges that Freedman and Weissman got seven forged Motherwells from a Long Island woman, Glafira Rosales, whose “husband or partner,” José Carlos Bergantinos Diaz, has “been accused publicly, as far back as 1999, of allegedly trafficking in forgeries.” The stunning allegations came in the wake of a pending Manhattan federal court suit against Weissman for selling one of the “worthless” paintings to a European gallery, Killala Fine Arts, for $650,000 in 2007. Killala’s suit also claims the Dedalus Foundation broke a promise to include the painting “Spanish Elegy, 1953.P.24” in a definitive catalog of Motherwell works to be published next year. In response, the foundation is cross-suing Weissman for $9 million-plus for “negligent misrepresentation” for allegedly lying about the painting’s provenance in a bid to get it authenticated.

Manhattan Art Dealers Accused of Selling Forged Paintings (NYPost)