Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Copes with Collector’s Hopes

The New York Times has an important story about a lost Mondrian owned by a Swiss collector who has been trying to get the work recognized as authentic by bootstrapping the work through museum shows. Although the work is slated to be donated to the Stedelijk museum, the “established” collector seems to be ignoring repeated scholarly opinions on the painting:

information provided to The New York Times from the Netherlands Institute for Art History, known as the RKD, indicates that the Swiss owner of the work who has lent the painting to three art institutions — the Bozar, the Stedelijk and the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland — has known since 2006 that the attribution to Mondrian has been questioned. The records show that Mondrian expert Joop Joosten, who co-wrote a definitive 1998 catalog of Mondrian’s abstract works, inspected the painting himself in 1994 and again in 2004. Both times he rejected it. In 2006, according to the RKD, Mr. Joosten informed the painting’s owner that it was most likely a copy.

It Might Have Been a Masterpiece, but Now It’s a Cautionary Tale  (The New York Times)