Knoedler Gallery's 15-Year Art Forgery Scandal Exposed in Documentary

The documentary 'Driven to Abstraction' reveals how New York's prestigious Knoedler & Company gallery sold forged artworks for 15 years, netting $80 million. The gallery, founded in 1846 and a pillar of the Upper East Side, closed abruptly in November 2011. At least 40 canvases were fakes attributed to Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Robert Motherwell. The scheme was orchestrated by Glafira Rosales, a collaborator of gallery president Ann Freedman, who convinced Freedman of a mysterious seller, 'Mr. X,' offering inherited paintings without certificates. The actual forger was Chinese immigrant Pei-Shen Qian, who painted the works in his Queens studio for $5,000 each, aged with tea bags by Rosales's boyfriend José Carlos Bergantiños Díaz and his brother Jesús. When the scandal broke in 2016, all conspirators except Rosales had fled. Rosales was convicted of fraud and tax evasion in 2013, but litigation continued until August 2019, when the tenth lawsuit against Knoedler was settled. The documentary highlights the opacity of the art market, where collectors' anonymity and lack of regulation enabled the fraud. Director Daria Price noted that no buyers shared doubts or participated in the film due to embarrassment and the culture of secrecy.