Quiet Chinese artist believed to be creator of modernist fakes

Pei-Shen Qian's neighbours in the New York borough of Queens knew he scratched out a living as an artist.

They were less clear on why he kept his windows covered or why, every so often, a man in an expensive car would visit carrying paintings to a painter.

"He would bring a painting in and show it to him, for him to work on or fix up something," Edwin Gardiner, 68, who lives across the street, said.

Parts of the mystery became clearer as neighbours learned that Qian, a quiet 73-year-old immigrant from China, was suspected of having fooled the art world by creating dozens of works modelled after America's modernist masters and later sold as their handiwork for more than US$80 million.

Qian, who came to the United States more than four decades ago and struggled to sell his own work, earned just a few thousand dollars for each of his imitations.

"He was frustrated because of the language problem, the connection problem," said Zhang Hongtu, a friend and acclaimed artist who lives in New York.

Qian's low profile as a painter evaporated in recent weeks as federal authorities decided that he was the artist whose fakes are at the heart of one of the bolder art frauds in recent memory.