Who was Elmyr de Hory, the forger who fooled dealers and museums worldwide?
He is said to have forged over a thousand paintings, and he insisted he never once signed another artist's name.
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Elmyr de Hory was a Hungarian-born painter and art who is said to have produced over a thousand forgeries, sold to reputable galleries all over the world. His specialty was not copying one picture but imitating a painter's whole style, and for years it worked, until experts noticed and some galleries alerted .
He began in Paris after the Second World War. De Hory tried to make an honest living as an artist, but he discovered an uncanny ability to copy the styles of noted painters. In 1946 he sold a drawing to a British woman who mistook it for an original Picasso. Soon he was selling Picasso pastiches to Paris galleries with a story attached: he was a displaced Hungarian selling what remained of his family's collection, or he had acquired the works directly from the artist.
Step 1: Paint in the style
A new work in a famous painter's manner
Step 2: Add a story
A displaced selling the family collection
Step 3: Sell to a gallery
Reputable galleries took the pictures as genuine
Step 4: Experts notice
From 1964, as his work began to suffer
Step 5: is alerted
Some galleries called in the police
The story was part of the act. De Hory claimed an aristocratic birth, but later investigation suggests a middle-class childhood. It is estimated that his forgeries sold for more than $50 million in today's value.
Then the experts caught up. From 1964 de Hory began to tire of forging and his work began to suffer, so experts started noticing the fakes. By 1966 the Texas oil Algur H. Meadows, who had been sold 56 of them by the dealer Fernand Legros, demanded Legros's arrest once he learned that most of his collection was forged. Later, in Orson Welles's film F for Fake, de Hory asked a question that still stings: what makes his forgeries inferior to the real thing, if they fooled so many experts?
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Recap
Painting in another artist's style is not a crime; falsely signing or selling it as that artist's work is.
💡 A trick to remember it · Style is free, the signature is the sin: de Hory painted like Picasso, but the lie was the crime.
Surprising fact · Forged de Horys have appeared on the market because his fakes became valuable.
Sources (2)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (14 claims) cites at least one of these.