User Reviews

There has been a rash of recent films about art forgers, so I have been watching all of them because the topic intrigues me. The stories all have interesting parallels but are distinguished by the particular artist´s own eccentricities. Elmyr De Hory´s story is truly fascinating. He was quite the playboy (albeit gay) and was hanging out in Ibiza with all sorts of outcasts during the height of his success. Like Beltracchi, Ribes, and Landis, De Hory created fakes, not exact copies of existent works. So he, too, knew a lot about the history of art and had a lot of technical savvy. Unlike the others, De Hory does not seem ever to have developed his own style, and sadly he committed suicide when he came to believe (erroneously) that he was about to be extradited for his crimes. Apparently many of his works are lurking still in great museums and private collections, with people too terrified to subject their possessions to rigorous analysis for fear that they may prove to have been among the dupes. Eventually the truth will emerge, when someone tries to sell the works, as usually happens, sooner or later. Like Beltracchi, De Hory was ultimately caught because he used a titanium white paint not available at the opening of the twentieth century and so which could not have been used by the French painters he regularly faked.

I enjoyed this film. There was very little time spent with De Hory himself, who comes off as an elusive character, which seems fitting since he lived a double life, in the shadows...