Why the long faces? Because this Modigliani exhibition was full of ‘garbage’ fakes
Art lovers are being urged to seek refunds after an expert appointed by an Italian court concluded that at least 20 out of 21 ‘Modigliani’ paintings in a recent show were forgeries
Consumer advocates in Italy demanded refunds for ticket holders Wednesday after an expert concluded that almost all the paintings in a Genoa exhibition devoted to Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani were fakes.
The expert, appointed by a Genoa court as part of a prosecutor’s probe, determined that at least 20 of the 21 paintings displayed during the 2017 Ducal Palace exhibit were clearly forged, Italian news agency ANSA reported.
The palace, which had outsourced the show to private organisers, is itself seeking damages for the embarrassment caused by the episode.
Consumer advocate Furio Truzzi urged exhibition-goers Wednesday to seek refunds based on fraud. His organisation set up a hotline for people who bought tickets or travelled to Genoa to see the show.
Noted Italian art collector Carlo Pepi, who was among the critics who questioned the provenance of the works displayed in Genoa, described the paintings as “garbage” in an interview on Italian state TV’s RaiNews24.
Modigliani, the early 20th century artist whose elegant style as a painter and sculptor was distinguished by elongated necks and faces, died in poverty in Paris in 1920.
Modigliani fakes have caused embarrassment before in his native country. Three marble heads fished out of a canal in Leghorn during the 1980s were initially hailed as long-lost Modigliani masterpieces.
In closing down the exhibit in July, the Ducal Palace noted that it had outsourced the organisation of the show, including the selection of the works to be displayed. The palace said it would “seek legal protection for its rights and public image.”
The owners of the paintings put on display in Genoa were likely to seek a counter-opinion from other experts, since actual works by Modigliani would be worth millions of dollars.
The court-appointed expert, Isabella Quattrocchi, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Italian news reports said she concluded that, among other details, the pigment on the exhibited paintings wasn’t consistent with the kind Modigliani used.
Milan daily newspaper Corriere della Sera quoted one of the exhibit’s two curators Wednesday defending his work and saying that he wasn’t the authenticator of the selected paintings.
“I gathered the information and the documentation that was supplied to me for every canvas,” curator Rudy Chiappini said. “If there have been irregularities, you need to go back to the source, to whoever made the first attribution” that Modigliani created the paintings.
“I, until proof to the contrary, remain of the idea that the artworks are good” ones, the newspaper quoted Chiappini as saying.
On the eve of the show’s March opening, Chiappini said: “Setting up an exhibition of Amedeo Modigliani is always a new adventure.”
“I believe that although he painted less than 300 paintings in his life, it’s always worth going through his career, starting from a new painting,” he added.
