The documentary I watched was "Made You look" the director of the documentary was Barry Aurich. This documentary was based on a true story and it spoke about fake art work. The documentary started of by saying "people are fooled by art much than we know" and as soon as that introduction hit, it made my mind begin to think on what the documentary was going to be about. As the documentary unfolded it stated that the director of the Metropolitan Museum was once asked, "how many fakes could be on the wall?" fakes in this case meant how many fake art work could possibly be on the wall and he replied saying "I have no idea" and they agreed he would say that because it must be embarrassing to state that they were fooled and had been sold fake artwork.
It was sad to see how many people were fooled by fake art work. A lady that spoke in the documentary said that she was convinced they were real and got played. As the documentary continued it stated that probably the largest art fraud has been selling fake artwork of the biggest names of artists from the 20th century. Unfortunately, even though most of these artworks were sold all of them were fake. The worst part was that these art pieces were sold by millions of dollars but they were actually worth nothing because they were all fake.
Then they begin to talk about the person that had been in charge of scamming big time, her name was Glafira Rosales A self described art dealer. A lady narrating said that Rosales "comes off the street with a trunk full of supposed masterpieces. The artwork Rosales had were beautiful and all looked real but unfortunately they were all lies, they were all fake art work. This was in 1955 in N.Y. They explained how Rosales was a well dressed "art dealer" and was very polite. People thought that the work she would take to sell was beautiful, you could never tell it was fake because they chose many old canvases and put signatures and the dates on the back of it. They made the art pieces look original and no one could possibly tell that they were fake until she got caught.
It was incredible to hear how paintings back then in the 50's and 60's were sold for little money, but Rosales sold them for a lot. Rosales never had the provenance which means the paperwork of where the artwork came from etc. but Rosales was smart she would always have a backup story such as the paperwork was "destroyed" etc. When they began to ask experts to check the art work thats when most began to know that Rosales's art pieces were fake. However, they are really smart when making these art pieces because they do many things to these paintings, they get old canvases and they add dust to it and many things in order to try and give it age and credibility.
More and more people liked Rosales worked and no one could tell it was fake. Only some that began to ask experts to check into it. It was stated that Rosales sold over 60 fake paintings that were ultimately sold for $80 million dollars. It was said that Rosales always wanted her paintings to look real because if she did she would be the best art dealer out there. She wanted to be on top of them all. But when "IFAR" took charge they were told paintings were fake and tried to get their money back. At the end of the day Rosales got caught but fooled many with her fake art work.
The first picture will be of Rosales the "fake art dealer"
The last picture will be one of the many fake art pieces.
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