♪♪ Auctioneer: And for lot 100, I have an opening bid of $100,000.

100?

Any bids?

$110,000.

Art market is booming right now.

Auctioneer: 120 on the telephone now.

$120,000.

Let's face it, it's a feeding frenzy, isn't it?

Auctioneer: ...on my right.

$160-- $200,000.

The auction houses are having pretty fantastic success.

Auctioneer: ...on my right for $230,000.

The art market is totally unregulated.

It's rife with fraud.

Auctioneer: At $250,000... You can open the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal almost any day and see some story.

Auctioneer: 260.

Sort of like the penny stock market in the 1960s.

Auctioneer: $260,000.

It's kind of fun that way, but you have to pay a lot of attention.

Auctioneer: $260,000.

The trough is the art market.

The trough is what's selling.

Auctioneer: Going once.

Going twice.

Going for a third?

On the hammer, $270,000.

What you're doing is putting what's going down well with the animals at the time.

Auctioneer: 280.

Back in.

290.

People collect art for all sorts of reasons.

Auctioneer: Do I hear 300,000?

And to find out that what you're collecting isn't real... Auctioneer: Last chance.

$300,000, I will sell.

I see, probably, a fake a week, but I don't get caught with them.

Charron: The concept of "caveat emptor" is alive and well in the US.

Wittman: It's just like your mother told you.

If it's too good to be true, it's probably not true.

[Gavel thuds] Auctioneer: Sold.

♪♪ ♪♪ Narrator: Like many a good tale, it all started because of a girl.

Well, sort of.

I saw her across the crowded room.

Her soft shoulders, her long neck, her auburn hair, her knowing smile.

My friend made the introductions.

They both baited compliments out of me.

I had to get to know her, I had to have her.

And it was then that my friend told me... "She's fake."

[ Woman singing operatically ] And that's how my eight-year-long journey into the art, life, and crimes of Elmyr de Hory all began.

Let's say we could find a Modigliani made by Kisling... ...a Modigliani by Elmyr... and one Modigliani by Modigliani.

We put these three drawings... ...in front of a group.

Let's say one... is a director or curator of drawings of a -- of the Metropolitan, one is a... [Speaks foreign language] and one is a great art dealer.

It could be anyone, from Knoedler to Perls or any of the great ones who consider themselves great and experts.

And if any of them recognize which one is which, I am ready to make a great gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and they can hang it next to some other Modiglianis who are possibly also by me.

Nichol: When you look at the famous forgers, you look at Tom Keating who did Samuel Palmer and Constable, Eric Hebborn who specialized in doing old master drawings.

Charron: A fellow named Beltracchi and one named Perenyi at a Qian level -- very, very talented works.

Van Meegeren, of course, who's famous for doing Vermeers.

It's nothing new.

It's been going on for probably 2,000 years.

All these people were pretty much frustrated artists, and so, they started to copy other artists' works and passing them off as being by them.

Charron: Of course, for someone like Elmyr, his fakes were so good, people would see them and they wouldn't feel the need to look much further.

Myers: He's a person who was able to do a great deal of tricking others to a degree that I think is not possible anymore today.

When you have fakers coming out now, you don't have them having passed off a thousand works, you have them passing off 100 or 200 works.

And I think that's largely because of the new tests, also sort of a general suspicion on the part of the art world, so he's sort of a watershed moment for the sort of the history of forgery.

To make, first of all, a point, I don't copy paintings, painters.

I paint in a certain style.

It could be the style of Matisse or the style of Modigliani, in the style of Picasso, the style of Dufy.

Olson-Urtecho: His forgeries were so good that many people wouldn't recognize them as fakes.

A lot of people would look at an Elmyr but think that they are seeing a Picasso or a Matisse or Modigliani or some of the other greats that he faked.

Ellis: His knowledge of art was clearly very good.

Technically, he was a good artist.

So he could replicate pastiche, uh, other known artists' work.

Um, and he knew enough about the market to know how to actually sell it.

Charron: Forgers want and need to have compelling and believable-sounding stories to go along with their fake works.

In his case, Elmyr presented himself as a sort of down-on-his-luck aristocrat whose family had fallen on hard times and he was selling off his collection to help pay his way.

Everything what I sold very miserably.

The big money what was made was never made by me.

It was always made by the dealers and the people who resold it.

What I got for it was a -- was a token.

Charron: Like a lot of forgers, he never identified for anyone all of the works he did.

So, we may never know how many are out there.

We are never safe from forgeries, frankly.

I think a lot of people have sleepless nights about this.

They really do.

And the question is, really, "How many of them passed into museums?"

I remember reading Thomas Hoving's book about fakes, and he claims that 40% of all the works that he saw when he was at the Met were fakes.

Things that were offered to him.

40%.

Conservator friends suggest that a full 25% of any one major museum's holdings, including things in storage, are not right.

I never offered a painting or a drawing to a museum who didn't buy it.

Charron: It's probably true that there are some in museums or in the hands of collectors or their heirs today that could be found.

Man: How many are still out there?

Charron: It's a mystery.

"Expose the man who holds the art world on red hot threads."

Wittman: When the art world looks at a painting or whatever it is, and they ooh and aah over it, and they decide that it's fantastic and it's wonderful, when these connoisseurs find out that these pieces are not legitimate, I think there's a certain amount of egg-on-the-face situation.

And I think at that point, they don't want to talk about it because they made a mistake.

Charron: It is the ultimate game of cat and mouse.

And how purchasers -- unwitting purchasers of fake art are supposed to know that, I think raises a lot of very, very difficult-to-answer questions.

And certainly difficult in a legal sense, and something that the law just has to struggle with on a case-by-case basis.

Really, any area of crime within -- involving art reflects what the marketplace is doing for art.

So, if Picasso is selling well, you'll find there's an influx of fake Picassos into the market.

Now, how they do that, whether they do a direct copy that's the worst thing they can do.

If they do a pastiche of an artist, perhaps he's not so well-known, perhaps he's second tier of that particular area of art, and therefore it's unlikely there's gonna be a complete catalog raisonné for the art dealer to check on.

But it looks right, and, hey, it's selling well, and if he takes it, "If I don't buy it off this person, he's gonna take it to a competitor who sure as hell's gonna buy it, and I've got somebody who is really interested in buying this particular commodity right now."

Dealers go for it, they want to believe.

It's the desire of wanting to see it right.

And this is what the forger and the con man is playing on.

Well, the actual art market itself, worldwide, is about $200 billion a year.

That's the consumer part of that art market.

The largest consumer country in the world for this type of market is the United States.

40% of the $200 billion market is here in the US.

Almost $80 billion a year.

To put it in perspective, if you take the four major sports in the United States -- baseball, football, hockey, and basketball, the total receipts each year is about $26 billion.

Man: How much of that $80 billion do you think is caused by fakes?

The FBI, Scotland Yard, Interpol, we put together some estimates as to what the possible illicit cultural property market could have been.

And at that time, we said maybe $6 billion a year.

When we talk about that market, we are not just talking about theft, we are talking about frauds, forgeries, and fakes, as well as theft.

And from my experience, what I've seen, probably 75% of that market is frauds, forgeries, or fakes.

It is not theft.

Charron: All you know is you went to a gallery of some repute and bought something with the name Matisse, and it looks like a Matisse, and you spent a lot of money on it.

Are you supposed to suspect that maybe it was by de Hory all along?

It doesn't want to be a Matisse.

It just wants to demonstrate how in short minutes close I can get to Matisse.

Narrator: Clearly, I wasn't the first to be fooled and probably not the last, so I packed up a few questionable works of art that I had acquired and headed to Texas, where apparently one of the greatest cases against Elmyr and his associates had been formed by a gentleman of the name Algur Meadows, who had been fooled, not once, not twice, but, well, in his own words... Of the 40 paintings I have acquired from two Frenchmen, 38 of them were fakes.

Olson-Urtecho: Well, there's different tracks that you need to do.

A lot of it is a track that is focused on the paintings themselves and where they're located, and another track is following the forger himself.

Visualize a three-legged stool.

Those three aspects are provenance, forensics, and connoisseurship.

Man: So, provenance is -- that's getting to where it came from, yes?

Provenance is the history of it.

It includes conservation done to it.

People emphasize the sale, but they should also focus on the conservation and other things that were done throughout its history.

Tell me about the connoisseurship side.

Connoisseurship is the oldest of all the practices.

It's looking at the painting -- Does it correspond with the style of the artist?

Does it have that air, that aura, that says, "This is -- this is it.

"This is the brush stroke.

This is the -- the content -- the subject matter is correct."

On the forensic side, there's a lot of new developments.

A lot of this technology being brought in to identifying, attributing, authenticating works of art are technologies that were initially done for other industries.

Khandekar: Traditionally, understanding a work of art has been the world of the art historian, the curator.

And with conservators and scientists becoming involved in the museum environment, we're finding that conservators have a certain perspective and scientists also can have a perspective that is valid and different.

And so, these three different areas have complementary skills.

So, using that investigative platform how would you go back in now and look at Elmyr, the master criminal?

Olson-Urtecho: From the provenance side, we would look at dealers in the cities matching with the cities he lived in.

Then see if you can find records of their operations with, say, a sales receipt, a purchase receipt.

Charron: I think a big difference between a forger in Elmyr's day and a forger today is Elmyr could fake his identity and have an easier time getting away with it because, you know, there was no Internet, there was no mass media in the same way.

So, Elmyr could present himself in San Francisco and have one alias, then he might be in Texas or Miami with another alias, and he just might not be discovered.

I think it's much harder to do that today, but not impossible.

Olson-Urtecho: On the connoisseurship side, if you deal a lot in those works, you get an eye, you pick up on things.

You get a feel for the artist.

And so, dealers can weed that out.

Boyle: We look for style, signature, medium.

The second thing we're gonna do is once we document those particular aspects of a painting, we're gonna start our research.

And the first thing we're gonna look for is history.

We're gonna look at catalog raisonnés.

Is the piece in a catalog raisonné?

We're gonna look, uh, to see if there's any literary references.

We're gonna look at exhibition history.

Has the piece ever been on exhibition?

Is there record of it ever being on exhibition?

Thirdly, we're gonna look at the provenance.

Where did the piece come from?

If there's no traceable evidence of acquisition, that does create a red flag.

What's your feeling looking at it now?

I'd have to say while the color scheme and the composition do appear similar to Leger's other studies, the actual execution, from a gut feeling, doesn't appear to be in the hand of Leger.

You're suspicious?

Yes, I am very suspicious.

Olson-Urtecho: Now, in the forensics, it's more difficult because a lot of these paints were used by the same artist.

Khandekar: In forgeries or something that's been over-restored, people will use something that is not necessarily made at the right time for that artist.

So, for example, somebody forging a Botticelli painting might have used Prussian blue.

That's a blue pigment that wasn't available until several centuries after the artist had died.

But on the painting, it looks right.

And so, they'll use it.

And afterwards, scientists can come along and identify that the blue pigment is not azurite or ultramarine as it should be, but it is Prussian blue.

And using instruments that have helped us identify pigments more carefully, infrared spectrometry's been developed to a new level, and we can take very small amounts of material and collect a very good spectrum, and then connect that to a library and we can identify pigments that way.

Also, at Harvard, we've developed a technique called Laser Desorption Ionization Mass Spectrometry.

And it's a technique where you'll put a sample of pigment on a plate, zap it with a laser, and that will volatilize it, put it into a mass spectrometer, and then those very complicated organic molecules that are used for modern paint can be identified.

And if we want to understand Elmyr, don't we sort of have to understand, I guess it would be his M.O., why he did what he did?

Why not be a real, legit artist, and why do this life of crime?

Yeah.

How would we go about that?

What would you suggest?

If we study the person, his profile, his upbringing, his background, socioeconomic upbringing, where he comes from.

It sounds like you're suggesting we go to Budapest.

In Budapest, we'll learn about the history of that period in which he comes up.

He has an upbringing, he has an art education.

You know, what does he do to be able to survive?

He changes his name.

That's very common in Jewish people who went through the Holocaust -- Right.

...and survived.

But that experience is so heavy that it can create a person in a certain mold.

And so, from that, we'll be able to know him better and understand why it was so easy for him to just turn away from being an artist himself and just flaunt it with forgeries to fund a lifestyle.

Yet our intention is to find out the truth.

Find out the truth and separate the fake from the real.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Gereben: I knew that Elmyr was a very talented faker, who had a very adventurous life, and who was a very special character.

But we didn't know very much about what happened to him when he live before here in Hungary.

His original name was Hoffmann Elemer.

In Hungarian we change the order of the names, we put surname first and then we put the given name.

At the turn of the century, there was a flourishing artistic colony in Transylvania.

It was called the Nagybánya colony.

That beautiful, lovely little Transylvanian village.

The translation actually of this village is "Huge Mine," Nagybánya.

This is a place where later, which Elmyr attended himself, too, for this was a really controversial time after the First War until the beginning of the Second World War.

Plenty of new art unions, organizations were established.

A lot of kitschy paintings appeared.

There was a huge battle against all these kitschy things that appeared on the market.

But it was very good works, as well.

There was also a little revival of avant-gardism.

So, Elmyr had lots of -- lots of inspiration, and lots of -- lots of impact, I think, on his artistic character.

Yes.

And perhaps, I think, this could be a reason why he felt a little bit overwhelmed or maybe -- Overwhelmed by other artists that were better, maybe?

Yes, or maybe he felt that the level to be reached is too high.

Yes.

And maybe it just blocked him and that's why he turned to faking things and not, uh, not living his own artistic career.

Or maybe more deeper part of his character, a more colorful and more "liar" character.

[ Laughs ] ♪♪ Lelkes: So, this art camp, or we call it art colony or artists' colony, it has a very rich heritage in this country.

Very famous artists' colonies like the Nagybánya artists' colony, it was a kind of intellectual circle.

And not only the physical space, but the common thinking.

But at the same time, trying to produce artworks that can be distinguished from other influence and other way of thinking.

Because everything was basically happening here on the spot.

And there's a very more -- very important aspect of being a member of a -- of a regular artist colony like Nagybánya and many others in this country.

Because it was a kind of brand.

As a brand it gave you prestige because you belonged to a certain intellectual circle that could give you some more support.

Bellak: To be a forger is a very strange psychological situation -- to be someone and to be someone else at the same time.

But they need to expose themselves.

The forgers himself or themselves want to be seen somehow.

Not as a forger, but as some, as the producer of the work.

Vegvari: [ Speaking native language ] Yeah, the surface is old.

Lot of cracks on the surface of the color.

Sometimes I see some bubbles, too.

It means this color is not 100 years old.

The paint is very creamy.

And I'm not able to see small grains inside.

Bellak: When we talk about art and when we love art, we love the history, that which is not seen.

We love that it was painted by someone who we love.

We love Monet.

We love Tiziano.

We love Picasso.

This is a part of this whole things that we -- we believe as art.

Vegvari: Several times, I see artificial aging -- flooding, make it dirty, and so on and so on.

Bellak: When something suddenly proves to be forgery, this is an attack of this kind of knowledge and this kind of belief in -- in our personality.

And this is something that's very, very difficult to -- to cure.

Forgery must be served as fresh as possible.

So, the next day is not as good.

The original things are -- have the same quality every time.

And gives you new questions.

They have new inspirations, even at its young or 500 years old.

But you see that, yes, there is still some power.

Vegvari: A hair.

Maybe the hair of the artist.

Here.

It's so funny.

Bellak: The forgeries unveil themselves, by themselves, automatically.

This is the time -- the time executes the forgeries after some years.

Vegvari: We go step by step and measure each color with XRF gun, and later on we've got the chemical components.

So, at first, I will measure the red one.

On the red area, we need to find phosphor with mercury or red lead.

On the white surface, cadmium yellow.

And what is the most important, that on the white area, it mustn't be titanium white if this artwork was painted with Derain.

So, it must be lead white, a kind of mixture with zinc white.

I think that, yes, in aesthetical sense, the perfect forgery can be produced.

But art-historically sense, it's impossible.

Vegvari: So, it's not 100 years old, I'm sure.

Bellak: Now we say, "Oh, it's very easy to see, yes, it's Elmyr de Hory."

Why did collectors of the 1950s didn't see that it's bad things?

Because they were living at that time.

And the forgeries were prepared for the taste of that time.

Vegvari: Yeah, maybe the paper was much more older.

Bellak: I think that even today, even this moment, some corner of the world, a good quality forged painting is, uh, made.

[ Laughs ] Vegvari: I'd say 50.

This painting around 50 or 60 years old.

Bellak: And if someone ask if there are forgeries in an art collection, the Hungarian National Gallery, I would say that as much as I know today, we don't know about forgeries, but there might be in 100 years.

♪♪ Gereben: So, for me, this whole research was very interesting because when we met, we started to investigate a bit -- a little bit more deeper, we started to dig a little bit more deeper, here in Hungary, in the archives, in databases.

And that opened another or maybe more deeper part of his character, a more colorful and more "liar" character.

[ Laughs ] I'm not sure that it's him, but I can't really imagine that there was another Hoffmann Elemer at the same time.

And it says that, uh... that, uh, there was a...

The story goes back to the last year when there was a huge case, that Hoffmann Elemer -- Elemer Hoffmann, the painter -- was punished by -- was arrested by the police because of stealing something.

[Chuckles] The... And later, against this artist, Zita Perczel, who was the actress of [Speaking native language] Hungarian theater.

Yes, we found something very interesting about Elmyr in an archive.

Uh, a newspaper article, actually.

And it was about a very interesting story, that once he painted a portrait of an actress.

And while painting this actress in the apartment of her family, when they didn't pay attention, he just took a few things away.

He had stolen a few things away, like silver things and jewelries.

And of course, the parents of this actress discovered, and discovered that he was a thief, basically.

And they went to the police.

The police investigated.

They found everything in Elmyr's flat.

All the silver, all the jewelries.

And of course, he was arrested.

It's a funny story, I think.

No?

And he told that, "Well, those were very, very strange times."

He doesn't exactly remember what happened in those times.

Probably, it all happened because he was in Serbia when the king was killed.

And he was arrested then because they thought he's a spy.

And he was even treated with morphine.

And even Prince Joseph can tell that it was truth because while he was painting his portrait, he was treated with morphine because he was so extremely exhausted and excited and -- and sick, so... [ Laughs ] And his lawyer ask him to -- to examine his state of mind.

Whether he's -- he has some psychological problems.

de Hory: And then I proceeded to France, to Paris where I studied under Fernand Leger at l'Académie la Grande Chaumière.

Gereben: And I must -- I must also add that in this article, we could read that he was punished and he was arrested before several times.

Not only in Budapest, but also in London, in Zurich, and other European cities.

Cordesse: [ Speaking native language ] Gereben: Actually, this is something that he denied and told that his passport was stolen, and someone under his name committed these crimes.

Cordesse: [ Speaking native language ] de Hory: When all of the other people sort of tried to get over the Atlantic, I returned to -- I returned to Budapest.

Olson-Urtecho: Just imagine what it's like.

You're in France, war's about to break out.

The French are getting a little excited because, all of a sudden, they realize, "Well, if there's Germans coming in then everybody with a Germanic background is gonna be suspect."

So, they are already starting to put people in prison.

If Hungary's his home, then the natural thing to do is go back home.

Elmyr goes back to Hungary.

And Hungary's far away, so, technically speaking, it's also a point of escape.

And he is a mischievous, opportunistic person based on the background that we've come to know of him, so I think, honestly, it was the right choice for him, and he probably felt that being back in the homestead would allow him to sort of regroup and figure out what the next step would be.

de Hory: The war broke out.

Gereben: And the stories around, uh, his staying in this concentration camp are very questionable.

Olson-Urtecho: But clearly, if it's before 1944, then obviously it's the Hungarian authorities.

He explains that, um... he was injured.

His leg, I think his leg was broken, and he was sent to hospital.

This -- This didn't happen in those times.

Masurovsky: You think that somebody like Elmyr might realize that his background could work against him, but it can also work for him.

The International Tracing Service is really about anybody who disappeared or who went missing.

The fact that we do have so many Hungarian names is predicated both in part because of the Budapest situation, but also because so many deportations occurred.

And once you've crossed the "border," and face incarceration in a camp, then your name will surface.

In other words, you have to be in a prison, you have to be in a camp, you have to be in a place where you're gonna be registered.

So, we used this card index, uh, to see if we can find anything on Elmyr's family.

Gereben: 'Cause if we start to look archives, we mustn't use his invented name, Elmyr de Hory, but we must use, of course, his original name, Hoffmann Elemer.

Masurovsky: Now, they did confirm the mother.

They confirmed that he had a family.

Gereben: And also another relative, a relative's grave was mentioned in the letter who was called Adin.

Masurovsky: But we couldn't go too much beyond that.

It's only if he, uh, somehow just fell off the radar screen, and he wouldn't be, uh, listed.

But people like Istvan and Elmyr, at this point, were sort of looking at them as a duo, that enable one another to do things, more illicit than licit.

And those are the kinds of people, frankly, who, wake up interests in intelligence agencies.

And if his talents are known even to Istvan, and if Istvan is close to the Germans for whatever reasons, then that's the kind of message that doesn't go unheeded.

Because, by the early '40s... [Speaks German] which is really the foreign counter-intelligence arm of German secret service is looking for people like that, because they need fake passports, fake visas, and if you have skilled individuals like Elmyr who were available, then they're likely to recruit them.

Gereben: "I was taught to question everything."

Who knows?

What is it?

What makes you travel?

You want to change your landscape, you want to meet new people, you want to meet new faces.

You think you'll meet somebody more attractive in the next town as you met there.

You never know why -- why people travel.

[ Line ringing ] Oppenheim: Michel Braudeau, please.

[ Speaking foreign language ] Braudeau: [ Speaking native language ] Woman: [ Speaking native language ] [ Speaking native language ] [ Speaking native language ] [ Speaking native language ] Restellini: [ Speaking native language ] [ Speaking native language ] A titled Englishwoman walked in one day to my room, and she saw on the wall -- pinned on the wall, a drawing.

And say, "Hey, where you got that Picasso?"

I say, "Well, do you think it's a Picasso?"

She say, "Well, I know enough about Picasso to know whether it's a Picasso or not."

I say, "Fine."

She say, "Would you sell it?"

I say, "Well, delighted."

So, she says, "Well, how much?"

Well, I can't remember saying.

I think £50, I think she offered me.

And I did sell it to her.

I didn't feel good about.

She was a friend.

But the £50 helped me a great deal, because it was the day of the payment for the rent, and I didn't have the money for the rent.

[ Speaking native language ] Braudeau: [ Speaking native language ] [ Speaking native language ] I need to take it out of the frame, but it's pretty rigid.

So, I think there may be another canvas attached to that, which would prevent me from seeing the back of the original.

Yeah, it has that feel.

If a painting's been torn badly, if a painting is flaking -- if it's been terribly buckled, crimpled up, to put it back in a single plane to consolidate the paint film.

Linings have also been done, um... perhaps to disguise the back of the original painting.

Let's take a look in ultraviolet light, to get a good look.

Um, the varnish... is fluorescing, which indicates it's been on there for a while.

If it's been in a restorer's hands, this might well be the restoration varnish.

It's uneven.

And the hair, the pigment in the hair, fluoresces the same way the signature does.

So, it certainly suggests that it is similar paint to that hair.

Man: [ Speaking native language ] Tice: [ Speaking native language ] Holbein Ellis: Now we do think this is, uh, Elmyr de Hory.

Oh.

Um, it is very good.

[ Laughs ] Yes.

And, uh... however, to ultimately fool the eye even more...

Yes.

...this is passed off as a print.

If you look at this image, you'll see lines, and they form a very pleasant face...

Yes.

...of a woman.

And what else do you see?

Oh, I see a signature.

Yeah.

We see it's a series.

Mm-hmm.

It says 23-50.

Okay.

So, the edition is 50, there's 50 in existence, and this is the 23rd.

Now, lithographs are a print-making technique.

You think of a Crayola crayon dragged across a paper with texture, what happens to the little bits of Crayola crayon?

Well, they stay on the paper.

Yeah, on the high points, on the high points.

When you're drawing with a wax crayon, the longer you draw... Yeah.

...the softer the wax gets and the darker the line.

So, what you generally see is an accumulation of more and more crayon onto the surface of the paper.

So, let's follow this line down.

Matisse drawings, line were never that sure as mine.

He was hesitant.

These are very long, complex lines.

Yeah, that's a very long line.

Look at that.

That is a long line.

And it's a lot of confidence in doing that, with that starting it and finishing.

You think he understood that -- This line right here.

Oh, that went on for a while.

Yep.

And we can see it ends over here, just when it gets really warm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a very confident hand.

That's extremely confident hand.

[ Laughter ] [ Speaking native language ] I want to write uniquely and exclusively of my work.

And I think my work is good enough and is serious enough to give pleasure and joy to the people who will acquire them.

Restellini: [ Speaking native language ] de Hory: Yes, I have too many girls.

They have to put up with -- how many?

One, with -- two, three, four, five.

Two boys and five girls.

It's a hard-- it's a hard profession.

[Laughter] Czulewicz: I met Elmyr in Palm Springs, California, in 1964.

I was involved with Sascha Brastoff -- very popular in Southern California and most known for his ceramics and his jewelry, gold jewelry and that -- and the Liberace, the pianist... ...and Howard Shoup, the high-style fashion designer for MGM, and also for Judy Garland, did all of Judy Garland's costumes for the Judy Garland television series.

The three of them had a gallery called the Esplanade in Westwood, California.

It was kind of like the "in" gallery at the time, mainly because of the namesakes of the ownership.

We had one of the most unique meetings with Elmyr at a little restaurant called the Matador, a little Spanish restaurant, which was a favorite hangout for a lot of celebrity people and that.

And, uh, the meeting was based on the idea of Elmyr having an exhibition of his own work at the Esplanade.

Very unexpectedly, in that meeting, in the conversations, uh, the idea of his reputation being affiliated with fake or fraudulent art had come up in conversation.

Prior to that, I had no true knowledge of it or anything, but, you know, as an art collector, art dealer, art appraiser and so forth, I kind of related to that portion of that conversation very deeply.

And I said, "My goodness.

Isn't this something?"

Man: [ Speaking native language ] Chisholm: I was first introduced to Elmyr de Hory's work as a little girl when I would visit Mother's friends in Palm Beach or perhaps Miami, and it just seemed every great house had a de Hory or two juxtaposed amongst all of these other fabulous collections of authentic, original paintings.

And I was a rather brazen, curious, outspoken child, then.

I had to be... ...have my enthusiasm curbed, so to speak.

You know, to not be so terribly rude as to ask, "Which one is the de Hory?

Which one is the fake?"

[ Speaking native language ] Cordesse: [ Speaking native language ] [ Speaking native language ] [ Speaking native language ] Braudeau: [ Speaking native language ] Khandekar: Elmyr offers us a chance to look at how decisions were made, and to understand with -- where we might have gone wrong, where a forger can get in there and take advantage of a certain system.

Agnes Mongan was somebody who started at a junior level in the museum and worked her way up to eventually be the director of the museum.

In a world at that time that was dominated by men, she was an important female figure and an inspiration for many.

She had these drawings that were in her collection.

Um, she had access to the Conservation Department and all the facilities there.

What the drawings had was that they were made of materials that were all available to the artist.

And so, any scientific approach to try and identify the materials used on the drawings would not have yielded any evidence whether they are real or not.

Again, they contain the veneer of something that looks genuine.

But when you spend a lot of time looking at them, there's something missing.

In this instance, it's the connoisseurship leg of the stool that came away and unbalanced this tripod.

You know, she had the eye.

You know, she was able to look at these and say, "There's something wrong with these drawings.

They don't look right."

Braudeau: [ Speaking native language ] [ Speaking native language ] [ Speaking native language ] Holbein Ellis: If we, at first glance, as we look at this, our eyes immediately make the connections, recognize the image.

And it says to us, "This is -- this is Matisse.

"In fact, here's Matisse, right back here, looking in."

And this would -- this is a very exciting drawing for that.

Yeah.

And it's signed, "Henri Matisse, 1935."

Everything is right about it, in terms of materials.

The ink is right.

He used a dip pen.

Uh, the characteristics of the lines are correct.

It is on an artist paper that is like the paper used by Matisse.

And we do have...

There's some writing on the back.

We do have a watermark on here, too, right here.

We know that Matisse did use MBM France paper.

However, there is a little red flag here.

Yes?

Perrigo.

J Perrigo, would appear, was never used by Matisse.

Interestingly enough, Perrigo Arches was sold in Australia.

Oh.

Oh!

[ Speaking native language ] Man: So, tell me about art in your life?

Did you grow up with it or how did it enter your life?

I grew up in a castle, so there must have been lots of it.

We got a few Modiglianis.

I've got a Marie Laurencin, which I think you've seen.

I got a couple of Dufys.

And, uh, Picasso, which I don't think... masters it.

[ Chuckles ] And a lady here -- who we can't mention -- she bought a huge collection.

And then, when they had a few problems, somehow or other, I ended up with the collection at a price.

But as you know, he didn't make much monies doing his own stuff.

So, then whoever it was started making him... not copy, but make one more.

So, let's say there are 100 Picassos, there must be 150 nowadays.

They're fakes, aren't they?

They're not forgeries.

Because they are not copies, they're just one more.

So, like, if you -- if Dufy painted...20, now there are 50.

[ Chuckles ] Where he didn't -- he didn't copy precisely, but, I mean, as you well know, he used the right paper, he used the right -- whatever had to be.

But he was brilliant, I think.

And they say, "Oh, he never signed Dufy or Picasso."

That's rubbish.

Woman: [ Speaking native language ] Some of the widows, they still were alive, and they knew they were not even aware of what the husbands had done.

And he would just pay them a little bit, and then they would just sign a document saying, "Yes, my husband painted this."

And that was it, it was not that much research.

Man: [ Speaking native language ] ♪♪ ♪♪ Llobet: [ Speaking native language ] ♪♪ [ Speaking native language ] Martorell: When I came to Ibiza for the first time, the reason was, in the times of Franco, there was a lot of repression.

Here was a place with total freedom, completely virgin, very poor, very poor island, but because of poverty.

It was absolutely beautiful.

We were living without electricity and running water in the country.

de Cabrol: Ibiza, nobody knew about it, really.

It was like to get there the access was like, you know, you'd fly in a little plane, the airport was a tiny hut.

The place was so beautiful and so utopian, that everybody had the need to create something out of that.

There was -- it was quite extraordinary.

And in those days, in the '60s, you had, um... what you had if Franco was alive.

So, you had basically all the criminals who were being sought after by INTERPOL or whatever living on that island.

You had Nazis.

You had con men.

You had everything.

And in fact, you know, well, the police force in the island were dressed in remnants of the Afrika Korps.

'Cause Spain in the '60s and '70s was, you know, the church, and, uh, it wasn't like it is now.

They were like 40 years behind.

Martorell: The group of people in Ibiza was called a family.

They were all black sheeps escaping from our families.

And we created the family here.

de Cabrol: It was a beautiful island.

Powers: It was a wonderfully magic time, actually.

Martorell: It was a fantastic time.

Powers: In retrospect, it seems incredibly innocent.

Martorell: One of my uncles had a lover called Angeles de la Vega.

When I arrived to Ibiza, there was a woman -- she's still alive -- called Arlene.

An American woman.

She opened a bar, La Tierra.

Powers: It would be a little bit like Rick's in "Casablanca."

You see people there you knew from all over the world.

The bar was fantastic.

It was the meeting point after dinner.

It was run by... a Jewish-American lady named Arlene Kaufman.

She spoke Spanish impeccably.

Grammatically, but with a Brooklyn accent.

So, it was... [Speaking Spanish with Brooklyn accent] I mean, it was... And she was a fantastic DJ.

Not "Chumba, Chumba, Chumba," but I mean the best music you ever heard was Arlene in La Tierra.

The first day I arrived to Ibiza, of course, I go to La Tierra.

Angeles de la Vega, she had a bar next called La Sirena Gorda, The Fat Mermaid.

She was fat also.

"Come, sit down, let's talk."

Then I realize she was the lover -- had been the lover of my uncle Oliveras.

I was really young and looking quite good.

So, she took me to Elmyr's house as a sexual present.

I wanted to kill her.

I arrive there, completely naive.

I didn't know her.

Elmyr already was -- he always looked like a very old man to me, you know?

I never met Elmyr very young.

He had white hair, small, with glasses sometimes, you know?

And I remember, there was, like, a sculpture -- a white sculpture of a mermaid with a male sex.

And I was waiting like this, and suddenly I realized I was against that funny sculpture.

"What?

No problem."

Uh, Elmyr understood perfectly that I was not going to be there for what Angeles thought, and we became good friends.

Powers: Elmyr's house, La Falaise, was very beautiful.

Compton Miller: And he invited me to his villa -- his rented villa in Ibiza, which I really enjoyed.

And the funny thing about staying there was that you never saw him early in the morning.

His routine was to get up at dawn.

And there was one -- it was like a sort of garage, and he used to work in there.

The one thing was banned, he made it very clear, you not allowed into that room.

That room was a secret.

And that's where he painted, you know, until about lunch time.

There were a lot of artists in Ibiza in those days.

That was a very -- It was very much a center of activity -- of creative activity.

There was a lot going on.

And then, he would go down to Ibiza Town, where he was a great character.

People loved him.

And, you know, he would sit at his favorite bar and have a coffee and people would say, "Hi, Elmyr."

Man: He had a way in court.

I run him in the Montesol.

Woman: We met in that café -- whatever the cafe's called -- in Ibiza.

This is a picture that Elmyr did when we were both in, uh, Ibiza Town.

And he was sitting at a café, as he always did, particularly on a Saturday morning.

And, you know, I suddenly noticed he was doing a drawing, and it turned out that he was sketching me with this rather ridiculous hat.

And, um, and afterwards, he tore it off and gave it to me, and I'm rather proud of it.

Always when he was having a drink there or... coffee or lunch, there was a lot of people sitting around him.

So, tomorrow.

The party is a big party.

So, don't miss it tomorrow.

Woman: What time?

8:00.

Thank you very much, Elmyr.

Roger: And he was inviting everyone who'd like to have a drink or whatever.

So it was incredible.

von Merveldt: He was adorable.

He was very small.

And he had a mind of his own, as you well know.

He was -- he was giving fabulous party.

Everybody was received like princes.

And you were living in another world.

Of course, they had no money problem.

Everybody wants to eat?

Powers: He liked to play with people who were European aristocracy.

They were the people who really knew who he was, and he knew who they were.

And somehow that was his playground.

He enjoyed being with those people, that's who he wanted acknowledgment from.

Martorell: He knew the whole French community in Ibiza.

He knew Jacqueline de Ribes.

He knew my uncle [Speaks French] He, uh, he knew [Speaks French] And he had many friends.

He had -- Ursula Andress was a very good friend of his.

He knew Roman Polanski.

He was a very good friend of his.

Fernando Rey, the actor.

Martorell: I used to see him with a lot of friends like Countess Jacqueline de Ribes, who was nominated more -- most elegant woman in the world.

Man: [ Speaking native language ] Smilja Mihailovitch was an incredible personage and a very good friend of Elmyr, but it was fantastic because Smilja was married to a taxi driver.

When she comes here, and we don't know why she comes here, she pretends she's a princess.

But they used to talk in Hungarian or in Yugoslavian, and they were insulting each other.

It was fantastic.

I remember her saying [Speaking foreign language] It's like, "F * *k you," to him.

And in French he was saying [Speaking French] "Princess of my ass," you know.

It was incredible because they were very good friends, but they were fighting all the time.

He didn't seem to care a great deal about the art scene that was going on.

I mean, he was interested, but it wasn't... ...wasn't like he was going to be a participant in it.

Llobet: [ Speaking native language ] Ruiz: [ Speaking native language ] -Pacha organizes a party for cancer.

And there was an auction, and Elmyr gave us a painting.

And the painting is in the book of Pacha, the photo with him.

And the painting is quite ugly because he was fantastic [Speaking French] Fantastic, but when he was supposed to do something, it was four flowers and not very good.

de Cabrol: But there's some forgers who can copy very well, and then they have their own style.

He didn't have his own style.

Powers: I think he had an extremely profound understanding of what other artists have done.

I don't think he had the same desperate need or commitment to realize that in himself.

And the fantastic thing of Elmyr, he was unique in this world.

He was inventing.

-I mean, you would see this is a Matisse, this is a Picasso, this is a Chagall, this is a Renoir.

Even Picasso would have said, "This is mine."

Ruiz: [ Speaking native language ] Man: [ Speaking native language ] Powers: Sometimes in art, talent is the first thing that has to be transcended.

It's when you go beyond your talent and you go beyond what you know or what is known, that it starts to become meaningful and starts to become valued.

Llobet: [ Speaking native language ] Woman: [ Singing in foreign language ] ♪♪ Llobet: [ Speaking native language ] I believe he was in jail, I mean, for a brief time.

After, you know, when he was in the papers and all that, I don't remember in what year, but then they knew.

Man: [ Speaking native language ] Martorell: I don't think he knew his paintings were going to museums as fakes and all that, and when he finds out, I think it's when the bad thing started.

de Cabrol: His work was at, you know, the collection of Algur Meadows and the Perls, and, you know, it's, like, all scattered around.

Oppenheim: Not as Elmyr's.

de Cabrol: No, not as Elmyr.

Woman: Mr. Meadows, how did you happen to get into French modern art, and where did you start buying that?

Uh...

In 1961, my wife passed away.

In 1962, I married my present wife.

On our honeymoon, which lasted about six months, our first stop was Paris.

We went to several galleries and looking for rounded face.

And we found about seven altogether.

Six or seven, and we bought them all.

Well, besides buying in galleries did you get paintings any other way?

Uh, you -- you mean, about the two Frenchmen?

[Laughing] That's another story.

[ Speaking native language ] [ Speaking native language ] [ Speaking native language ] In 1964, my wife called me at the office, and said that, uh... a friend of hers has asked two Frenchman to come over and show us their -- some paintings they had for sale they had brought from Paris.

"And they want to come at 4:00.

Can you come home early?"

I said, "The very idea.

You wouldn't invite peddlers or strangers into our home."

I said, "No, I won't come home at 4:00."

But I did come home at 6:00, and the dealers were there.

And they had, uh, from the back of their car, they had taken out some six -- five or six paintings and had them standing all around the car.

And so they introduced themselves, and they appeared to be... gentlemen and... then I said, "Well, since you came anyway, bring the paintings on in the house."

Cordesse: [ Speaking native language ] Yes, they had certificates signed by, uh, experts appointed by the French government to authenticate such paintings.

And besides, they had evidence that they -- these particular paintings had been purchased from one of the outstanding auction houses in, uh, this country.

Duclos: I met Mr. Meadows' American attorneys.

I don't remember if he filed his complaint before the exam before the French justice... through me or through the US consulate.

What is clear from what you gave me is that it was filed against "X," which means -- for the US, it would mean "A-Y-Z," huh?

Man: Right, Mr. Smith or something.

John Doe.

John Doe, exactly.

And why did he do that?

Why... Because there's two ways to trigger an examination by an examining judge.

One way is to do it against the designated party, in which case, you have to file a bond.

Right.

If you find against "X," then it is up to the French examining judge.

The examining judge is going to investigate the case... ...will decide, uh... whether or not John Doe is going to stand trial.

Art cases are -- they cause problems for the courts.

The courts are not fans of having to decide art authenticity cases.

Ultimately any case you're gonna be able to bring in any kind of court, it is gonna have some proof of fraud.

And so, you're gonna have to prove the elements, same as in any other case -- a loss of -- some type of loss of profit or loss of money, something valuable, dependence on the information to make that decision, and the victim.

So, those are the things you're gonna have to show.

And in case of Elmyr at the time, that's what Meadows would have had to prove in his court proceedings.

So, for a judge to come in and say, "I think this work is or is not authentic," has ramifications.

And courts don't want to be -- they don't want to make those ramifications.

They don't want to be market-makers, particularly for something that they feel uncomfortable analyzing.

Meadows: For the next two years, they came to Dallas 10 or 12 times, each time bringing different paintings.

Woman: And you kept buying?

I kept buying.

Uh, did you buy, two, three, four at a time?

Two, three, four, sometimes eight.

What kind of money are we talking about here?

Oh, well...the first -- the first deal was perhaps, uh, $70,000 or $80,000.

All together... $600,000, perhaps.

Duclos: I think there was an international search warrant.

Legros I believe was, uh... arrested in Switzerland.

Cordesse: [ Speaking native language ] When you have an international warrant, it's cooperation between the two states.

[ Speaking native language ] The French asked that, uh, Legros be extradited from Switzerland.

[ Speaking native language ] Yes, Swiss had a similar system to the French one and you can be... put temporarily in jail or obliged to stay in a hotel until such a time as the Swiss authorities will make a decision.

[ Speaking native language ] Then even the French courts at that point are still having to continue a petition -- Yeah.

...that's not guaranteed.

No, no.

[ Speaking native language ] Elmyr, strangely enough, I don't remember him preparing the French case which was really directed against Legros.

Llobet: [ Speaking native language ] Charron: It's not illegal to paint something in the style of another artist.

Where you cross the line is if you sign that artist's name and you're not that artist.

Martorell: I don't think he knew his paintings were going to museums as fakes and all that.

And when he finds out, I think it's when the bad things started.

Olson-Urtecho: Well, we found, uh, some records that show that Elmyr had a painting lent to a friend who decided to put it on consignment with Knoedler.

What we do know is that the forgery by Elmyr de Hory was sold for $60,000 in 1958.

Charron: Knoedler is -- it was the oldest and the most prestigious gallery in America.

Prestige, I guess, is a qualitative term, certainly by many accounts.

Lookit.

Lookit.

"Expose the man who holds the art world on red hot threads."

People were not giving a s * *t in Ibiza about what Elmyr was doing.

He was very well liked in Ibiza because he was an outlaw.

Powers: He enjoyed his celebrity a great deal.

And the fact that it was based on notoriety didn't seem to faze him.

[ Speaking foreign language ] Powers: He started doing that same painting.

I mean, he would do a bigger hour of... whatever, you know, a Modigliani.

And he would sign their name.

And then he would sign "by Elmyr," so that he couldn't be charged with fraud and selling a fake.

But at the same time, it was -- it was a real fake.

It was authenticated by his own signature.

He became a star overnight with his wonderful pictures.

Picasso would get for something like that of, uh... $15,000, $20,000.

I will sell it for less.

In years to come, he said to me when we were walking down past the Royal Academy, he said that you'll find an Elmyr in nearly very major collection in the world.

Man: [ Speaking native language ] I would like to see that poor Hungarian refugee who would have resisted of that -- of that temptation.

Man: [ Speaking native language ] de Cabrol: All his life he was in flight and running away -- not from the police, but he was running away from the people he was involved with, like Fernand Legros and two other art dealers who were after him.

Man: Do you know anything about those threats that he received at least?

Well, uh...

I remember when they killed his dog.

They hang him on a tree.

I think there was a paper saying that next -- "The next will be you."

Llobet: [ Speaking native language ] de Cabrol: I mean, he was, like, really cornered.

Martorell: And one day, Elmyr arrived like usual to the terrace of the Montesol with his hippie bag, and saying [Speaking french] We thought he was making a joke.

I had breakfast with him the day before he died at the Montesol.

And he said that -- we all knew then that they were trying to extradite him and stand charges again, and he said, "No.

I will never spend another day in jail."

He said, "If they -- if I know they're coming for me, when they make the decision -- if they're coming for me, I'll kill myself.

They will not get me."

And he did.

de Cabrol: I think after many years of running away from the law and the lawyers and people who wanted to hurt him -- and I think he had just a moment of panic.

And I just... Man: [ Speaking native language ] de Cabrol: It's a shame because you know he was really -- I mean, he was not going to be jailed or extradited.

Roger: Or even some people say Elmyr did not died and he escape.

Martorell: The rumor is he was trying not to go to jail and pretend a suicide, and then the ambulance will arrive and he will be okay.

Llobet: [ Speaking native language ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Duclos: They have to be somewhere.

Normally they -- the 44 works that were -- were fake should have been destroyed.

Gereben: This is mean that there is few of fake on the market.

That's incredible.

Incredible.

de Cabrol: I don't think Elmyr gets any great pass just by saying, "You know, what I did was really good, and therefore it's beautiful, so it's art."

If he -- if he really believed that, he could have signed everything "de Hory."

I feel that you should burn it.

We burn everything... but myself.

[Laughs] ♪♪ Narrator: It's been said that beauty is truth and truth beauty.

But doesn't Elmyr's work blur that line?

His works were his own creation, executed brilliantly "in the style of."

At the very least, doesn't his life demonstrate him to be undeniably a true original?

But perhaps what is most troubling is that we are left to judge, exercising our own moral compass, empowering our own aesthetic, to offer opinion on beauty, truth, value.

We may never know how many works he created during his career, nor how deeply they have penetrated galleries, museums, private collections.

And we have no way of truly anticipating his continued impact on the art market.

But one thing is certain, Elmyr de Hory will forever influence how we look upon art.

And in that, he has ensured himself a page in art history as an accomplished, celebrated real fake.

[ "Got To Be Real" playing ] ♪♪ ♪ What you think now?

♪ ♪ I think I love you, baby ♪ ♪ What you feel now?

♪ ♪ I feel I need you, baby ♪ ♪ What you know ♪ ♪ To be real ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ Your love's for real now ♪ ♪ You know it's your love and my love ♪ ♪ My love and your love ♪ ♪ Our love is here to stay ♪ ♪ What you think now?

♪ ♪ I think I love you, baby ♪ ♪ What you feel now?

♪ ♪ I feel I need you, baby ♪ ♪ What you know ♪ ♪ To be real ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ Your love is for real now ♪ ♪ You know it's your love and my love ♪ ♪ And my love is your love ♪ ♪ Our love is here to stay ♪ ♪ What you think now?

♪ ♪ I think I love you, baby ♪ ♪ What you feel now?

♪ ♪ I feel I need you, baby ♪ ♪ What you know ♪ ♪ To be real ♪ ♪ What you think now?

♪ ♪ I think I love you now ♪ ♪ What you feel now?

♪ ♪ I feel I need you ♪ ♪ What you know ♪ ♪ To be real ♪ ♪ It's got to be real ♪ ♪ To be real ♪ ♪ It's got to be real ♪ ♪ To be real ♪