How a street peddler fooled some of Manhattan's biggest art collectors — and killed off the city's oldest art gallery

New York Post

5 days ago

Nestled within the mood light of the Jean-Georges restaurant at the Mark, or seated straight-back against a Turkish pillow in the Gallery at the Carlyle, the denizens of the Upper East Side float in a fish-bowl world.
Scandals, like personalities, are magnified. Collisions are inevitable. Yet even today, more than 15 years after her resignation from Manhattan's eminent Knoedler gallery and the circus trial that followed, society swims away from Ann Freedman.
'She did turn heads when she walked in,' said documentary filmmaker Barry Avrich of his first encounter with Freedman over 'a few bottles of expensive Montrachet Chardonnay' at the Mark, followed by dinner at Sant Ambroeus on Madison Avenue. 'And people would talk. Nobody was rushing like the old days to see her. Obviously, that had to hurt. She was a pariah.'
12 Math teacher turned master forger, Pei Shen Qian has been accused of forging the names of abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell and Willem de Kooning on at least 70 paintings.
In 2016, what had been elite gossip exploded into the art fraud trial of the century.
Freedman, the former president of Knoedler & Co. — Manhattan's then-oldest art gallery, founded in 1846 — was accused of facilitating the sale of $80 million in fake art. The plot, involving a pair of Long Island-based con artists and a math teacher turned master forger named Pei-Shen Qian, was audacious in ambition: Allegedly forging the names of abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell and Willem de Kooning on at least 70 paintings.
Everyone from museum experts and art scholars to the relatives of the artists themselves fell for it.
But the case was settled before Freedman took the stand. She walked. Was she an avaricious conspirator — or merely another victim of the con, as she maintains? The mystery of her guilt will now never be settled.
12 A few of Pei Shen Qian's faked Rothkos.
12 And a real work by abstract expressionist Mark Rothko.
Alamy Stock Photo
But for an insular and supercilious cadre of blue-chip collectors, there is no question that Freedman is to blame for their embarrassment. Perhaps flamboyant financier Pierre Lagrange spoke for the entire neighborhood when, over drinks at the Carlyle, he allegedly screamed at Freedman: 'I will set your hair on fire!'
He was displeased at discovering that the paint on the $17 million Pollock he bought from her wasn't invented until 1957 — the year after Pollock died.
Avrich has now written the definitive account of Freedman's fall, and her ambiguous role in the high-culture hustle to trump them all, in 'The Devil Wears Rothko,' out Tuesday. The title references what Avrich calls Freedman's 'very steely, Anna Wintour'-like personality — belied by her rimless glasses, curly gray hair and cashmere wardrobe.
12 Ann Freedman was the director of Knoedler when the fakes came through the gallery, but has insisted she, too, was duped.
AP
The book is a follow-up to the author's juicy 2020 documentary 'Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art,' streaming on Netflix.
''The Devil Wears Rothko' charts the explosive demise of New York's oldest and most prestigious art gallery with detailed and salacious insight into one of the world's largest art frauds, involving an '$80 million deception that duped high-profile experts, famous collectors and museums,' Avrich writes.
As The Post wrote in 2016, the fraud began in the early 1990s, when a former waiter from Spain, Jose Carlos Bergantiños Diaz, came upon a Chinese artist peddling art on a Manhattan sidewalk. Bergantiños offered to pay the man, Pei-Shen Qian, $500 per painting.
'Bergantiños would make the paintings look older with tea and dirt,' lawyer Luke Nikas, who represented Freedman, said at the time. 'Finally, he would give the art to Glafira Rosales' — his wife, who was a small-time art dealer on Long Island.
12 Before it closed in 2011, following the scandal, Knoedler was New York City's longest standing art gallery.
Robert Miller
But in 2003, a Pollock that originated with Rosales was deemed a fake by the nonprofit International Foundation for Art Research, leading to a $2 million refund from Knoedler to the buyer. Still, Freedman continued doing business with Rosales.
In 2011, Pierre Lagrange sued the gallery over the fake Pollock after Christie's and Sotheby's turned it down for auction.
A day later, Knoedler closed its doors.
Rosales eventually admitted to moving more than 60 'lost' works by Rothko and others — really painted by Qian — to Knoedler and downtown art dealer Julian Weissman.
In 2016, Freedman's attorney told The Post that she too was duped.
12 Domenico De Sole, seen here with wife Eleanor, was one of the high-flying Knoedler clients scammed.
Getty Images
12 De Sole is the chairman of Tom Ford's brand.
Getty Images
But Gregory A. Clarick, a lawyer for De Sole, had doubts.
'The biggest [problem] is that . . . Rosales kept walking in [to Knoedler] with unknown works that had no documentation. This should have signaled that the works were fake,' he told The Post at the time.
Avrich's book also serves as a behind-the-scenes making of his film about the case, while diving broadly into the opaque milieu of fine art dealing, the history of forgery and the increasingly high-tech fakes flooding the market.
If there's a punchline to the whole affair it's that, while the seething ultra-rich collectors — like Tom Ford chairman Domenico De Sole, private-equity powerhouse John Howard, former US ambassador Nicholas Taubman, casino CEO Frank Fertitta and Lagrange — took hits to their wallets and reputations, the criminally culpable con men mostly got away with it.
12 Hedge funder Pierre Lagrange (center left) sued the gallery over a fake Jackson Pollock after Christie's and Sotheby's turned it down for auction.
Greg Kahn
Rosales, who peddled the fakes to Freedman, only did three months in the slammer. Bergantiños, fled to Spain, where extradition was denied. Qian fled to China.
The playboy Michael Hammer — father of actor Armie Hammer — who owned Knoedler and made a fortune from the fraud, died in 2022 .
'I believe that everybody in this story was guilty of something,' Avrich told the Post. 'The art was hot, and everyone was trading on that.'
Following Qian to his apartment in Shanghai, Avrich discovered a room filled with 'hundreds of paintings' leaned against the walls.
12 Glafira Rosales, a small-time Long Island dealer, pleaded guilty to selling the forged artwork.
Gabriella Bass
'He claims he's only doing them for himself, he isn't selling them, but who knows,' the author said.
Several galleries in China have exhibited Qian's works and, in a surprise turn, he has become a sought after artist.
'I've had dozens of people reach out to me to try and find Qian's paintings to broker them,' said Avrich. 'They say, 'I'll pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars.''
But the majority of the fake art is still with the collectors who bought it and are too humiliated to let it see the light of day.
12 'The Devil Wears Rothko' is on sale Tuesday.
'Some were seized by the FBI and marked as fakes, some were destroyed, but the rest, collectors kept,' Avrich said. 'I asked Domenico de Sole where the Rothko was, and he said, 'It's hanging on my daughter's wall.''
Rosales has had less luck trading on her ill-fame.
Ordered to pay $81 million to victims of the fraud, she has seen authorities seize multiple properties, $33 million and more than 200 works of art, including authentic paintings by Sean Scully, Jules Olitski, Ellsworth Kelly and Andy Warhol.
She served nine months of house arrest and three years' probation. Rosales was last seen 'working as a bus girl in a restaurant, living in a rented room, struggling to live on a minimal salary,' according to her attorney.
12 'I've had dozens of people reach out to me to try and find Qian's paintings to broker them,' said book author Barry Avrich of the alleged faker (picured).
Bloomberg via Getty Images
Bergantiños — who according to Avrich, got his start dealing fake beluga caviar (even selling it to auction houses like Sotheby's and Christie's) — has fared better. Safe from the FBI's Art Crime Team, he agreed to meet with Avrich in his home town in Lugo, Spain, where he 'showed no remorse and blamed Rosales.'
'Before trying to sell me a harmonica that he claimed was once owned by Bob Dylan, he offered me advice on buying art: 'I would buy two or three upcoming artists and then sit on the paintings and the value will go up,'' Avrich recounted. 'He added: 'I entered the art world where many are called, but few are chosen.''
As for Freedman, she's still dealing art from a space at 25 East 73rd Street, steps from her old throne at Knoedler.
12 Rosales, who peddled the fakes to Freedman, only did three months in the slammer.
REUTERS
'She's been selling art with some fervor for the last decade,' said Avrich. 'But the gallery walls are mostly covered with emerging artists and the odd secondary market blue-chip art that she is selling on behalf of someone's estate.'
Although she's still a regular sight on Madison Ave., Freedman keeps a low profile. Her website is out of date, her Instagram is dead and her Facebook hasn't been updated since 2023. Still, the cracks keep on coming.
'Wonderful gallery!' begins one sarcastic Google review. 'They are all so nice! On the way out, a thin, curly, gray haired lady whispered that she could get me a Picasso for $500. I talked her down to $325! Paint was barely dry! It looks great, hanging over the cat litter box!'
Nevertheless, Avrich says he's taken flak for not going even harder on Freedman.
'I screened the film for Alec Baldwin,' said Avrich of the actor who, in 2010, bought a $190,000 phony painting by Ross Bleckner from a different unscrupulous dealer.
'He yelled at me as only Alec Baldwin does, saying, 'You treat her like a schoolgirl that did something wrong during recess. You have to be tougher on her,'' Avrich recalled. 'But that wasn't my role. I wasn't making a '60 Minutes' episode, or being Michael Moore. I let her tell her story. The world can decide where things shake out. Where she sits in this is a debate that rages on.'