GERMAN MUSEUM OPENS EXHIBITION OF FORGED RUSSIAN PAINTINGS

A top German museum, which is home to one of the world's most important collections of Russian avant-garde art, revealed that some of the artworks were fakes.

Cologne's Museum Ludwig has built up a collection of about 600 works of Russian masters, whose works date from between 1905 and 1930. But of the 49 of the 100 paintings held by the museum and so far examined by museum experts, 22 are assumed to be forgeries with 27 they believe to be originals.

The results of the investigation form part of an exhibition entitled "Russian Avant-garde at the Museum Ludwig - Original and Fake Questions, Research, Explanations," which opens at the museum on Saturday and runs through to January 3, 2021. "After a long period in which it was taboo, an increasing number of museums are becoming more transparent about how they deal with works that are not authentic and exchanging knowledge," the exhibition curators said in a statement. "Works by Russian avant-garde artists were counterfeited particularly often, they said, adding that this was often due to the impact of Stalinism on the nation's art world. Even recently, paintings from this era that have turned out to be not to be authentic have been presented in museums," they said.

Visitors to the exhibition will see the workings of provenance research along with various investigative techniques. This includes infrared and X-ray images, fabric tests, and material analyses that are used in establishing the authenticity of the works. The exhibition also shows how certain pigments help to verify the painting.

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