[CPProt.net] Dutch forger Geert Jan Jansen displays work after fooling artists

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

 Dutch forger displays work after fooling artists
Fri Dec 9, 2005 3:51 AM GMT

By Wendel Broere

ZWOLLE, Netherlands (Reuters) - A master of his craft, painter Geert Jan
Jansen was always happiest when his works were mistaken for those of other
artists.

Jansen, who says he taught himself to paint, turned to forgery when he found
it hard to make ends meet by selling his own work. He was so good that some
of the artists he copied claimed his works were their own.

Jansen chose ambitious targets, painting in the style of some of the 20th
century's greatest artists -- Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall and
fellow Dutchman Karel Appel.

"In the late 1980s, I had an art gallery in Amsterdam and I couldn't pay the
rent on time, that's how it started," he said in an interview with Reuters.

Later, working in a secret atelier in his chateau in central France, Jansen
produced scores of paintings. He was dubbed "master-forger of the century"
by art critics and detectives who investigated his canvasses, prints and
charcoal sketches.

Eventually, the law caught up with him and Jansen was sentenced to jail. He
served six months in France but is now free in the Netherlands and in
negotiations to serve out the rest of his two-year jail term there.

His works, which were locked up for more than a decade in France following
the police inquiry, were recently exhibited under his own name for the first
time in the Netherlands.

Jansen, a 61-year-old with combed-back silver hair and red-rimmed glasses
perched on his forehead, says he did not copy existing pictures.

He says he tried to get into an artist's soul and create new works -- a
couple per hour when he was in the mood.

"With Matisse, it's all about leaving things out. A line has to be good with
one try," Jansen explained showing one of 'his' Matisses, a charcoal sketch
of a sensuous woman.

"He uses one line for the shape of her face. I had to practice it 20 or 30
times. It takes a lot of preparation and my dustbin is always full at the
end," he said at the exhibition of his works in the central Dutch town of
Zwolle.

"Even the artists thought they were theirs. Several times Appel gave
certificates of authenticity to art houses, so did Warhol and Magritte's
heirs," Jansen said.

SPELLING MISTAKE

His works under other artists' names fetched between 200,000 and 300,000
euros, until he was caught.

"The genius of Geert Jan Jansen is that he masters so many ways of working,"
said Aegid Tonnaer, an art dealer who helped organise Jansen's show in
Zwolle.

"It's bizarre he can do paintings in the very physical style of Appel as
well as unbelievably detailed paintings of Botero."

Among other tricks, Jansen left paintings in the sun to create a craquelure
effect to make them look older.

Other art experts, however, are more critical. Auction house Sotheby's
declined to comment on his paintings, saying Jansen had had enough
publicity. Another Dutch art dealer faulted him for polluting the art
market, where his works still circulate.

Court documents show that Jansen admitted to making and selling forgeries
but he did not show any regret while talking to Reuters, just a hint of
annoyance that he had been caught.

On the crime, he simply said: "I sort of admitted it to the court."

Police became involved in 1994 after a spelling mistake on a certificate of
authenticity for a Chagall painting roused an auctioneer's suspicions.

"I spelt 'environ' ('around' in French) with an 's' when there shouldn't
have been one," said Jansen, who started painting as a child of three.

His atelier, where he produced scores of forgeries in the style of Gustav
Klimt, Amedeo Modigliani and Jean Cocteau, was discovered by investigators
in his castle in La Chaux in France.

Some 1,600 works including gouaches, lithographic prints, oil paintings and
sketches, were seized along with a false passport, false certificates of
authenticity and stamps.

Experts called in by the court, however, could not prove the works of art
were not authentic, Jansen says.

"The Orleans court called in experts, but they were the same ones who had
said earlier my work was the real thing," he said.

The court wanted to destroy all the seized works, but did not as they
included several authentic Picassos, Chagalls and Matisses for which Jansen
said he had bonafide certificates of authenticity, dating from his days as
an art dealer.

With the help of the director of Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art
at the time, Rudi Fuchs, one third of the works were repatriated to the
Netherlands in March this year.

The works now fetch 8,000 to 10,000 euros and after the Zwolle exhibition
they will be on show in Amsterdam from December 10 and in Belgium in March.

Jansen is not sorry and happily handed down tips of the trade to a new
generation of aspiring artists during a workshop held alongside his show.

"I am teaching them how to make a nice painting, a little Picasso or an
Appel, anything they want," he said with a grin.

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