The Cologne auction house Van Ham is withdrawing nine lots from its modern art auction scheduled for June 1 due to suspected forgery.
These are works attributed to artists of the Russian or Soviet avant-garde – an art-historical field in which legions of forgers have been employed since the collapse of the USSR and have flooded the market with their products (FAZ, May 14).
It is ironic that in the very city in which the Museum Ludwig presented in detail the sorting out of Russian forgeries recognized as such from its collection in the form of an exhibition, fakes of this type could now have prominently surfaced again.
The works in question can still be found in the printed catalog and its PDF version on the auction house's website; the online catalog has deleted them.
According to Van Ham, the research was not completed in time before the catalog was printed.
Lots 8, 10, 13 and 16 to 21 were withdrawn. These include supposed works by El Lissitzky, Wassili Yermilow and Lyubov Popova from the collection of the late banker Hilmar Kopper.
For lot 21, an assemblage attributed to the authorship of Wassily Yermilow, the expertise of Jean-Claude Marcadé is cited, who is known to have written false reports.
Likewise, the provenance of the Gmurzynska gallery for lot 17 – an abstraction in tempera and gouache on paper allegedly by the abstract artist Lyubov Popova – does not inspire confidence, as this art dealer has proven to have repeatedly sold forgeries.
The provenance of a painting attributed to Aristarchus Lentulov, estimated at up to 200,000 euros, can only be traced back to 1992.
At the request of the FAZ