Few films contain as many questions as Fraud, the documentary signed in 1973 by Orson Welles, that unique con man and manipulator who managed to create panic in the United States with his broadcast of an alien attack on Earth in the golden days of radio. One forger telling another’s story.
This is how the journalist and writer -also accused of fraud- Clifford Irving describes the arrival of Elmyr de Hory on the island of Ibiza, in the summer of 1961, ready to live his decade of great splendor:
“He wore a monocle hanging from a gold chain, his sweaters were always Kashmir (…). He wore a Cartier wristwatch, and he sat behind the wheel of a red Corvette Sting Ray convertible. It was, so he did viz, ‘a collector of works of art’.
Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Chagall… Elmyr was capable of reproducing the style of any artist and at any stage, a talent that, on the other hand, stemmed from his deep love for art. art.
Born in 1905 in Budapest, the son of two wealthy aristocrats of Jewish origin, Elmyr moved to Paris determined to become a painter, where he came to know Matisse, Derain and Picasso. That stage, however, would be cut short with the outbreak of World War II, when he came to suffer the iron mayo of the Gestapo.
During an interrogation in Berlin, his leg was broken and he was sent to a hospital. There, one day, without further ado, he saw the front door open, without any surveillance, and with his graceful gait he launched himself across it to escape from there, managing to get to safety in Budapest.
After the war, Elmyr returned to Paris and tried to earn a living as a painter, although without much success. He practiced imitating the works of his great masters, or creating original pieces in the style of one or another.
One day, a noble and billionaire friend, Lady Campbell, noticed a Picasso that Elmyr had painted as a mere hobby; she wanted to buy it, taking it for authentic. Thus began one of the most controversial and unique careers in the art world.
The collection of collections
He presented himself as a collector or dealer. Sometimes he spoke directly with potential buyers (both private and museums and institutions) and other times he resorted to intermediaries who in no way knew that he was the true author of the pieces.
For a time he remained faithful to Picasso, which was always a sure big sale, but he soon began to try his hand at other styles, and the works were selling equally.
He went from the hardships of Paris to staying in the best hotels in Europe, where his refined tastes found all kinds of stylistic proposals to develop an exclusive lifestyle.
He also dropped by in the United States, where he rubbed shoulders with the cream of society of the time and ‘placed’ his fakes on everyone, including René d’Harnoncourt, then director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. .
In the United States, he found a particularly interesting clientele in the great oil magnates of Texas. Eager to be sophisticated and willing to pay fortunes for paintings by great masters, everyone was delighted with the works that Elmyr actually painted.
In the mid-fifties his personal collection included drawings, watercolors and small fake oil paintings by Matisse, Picasso, Derain, Bonnard, Degas, Modigliani or Renoir, among others.
Already becoming a prominent art collector, he assured that there was no modern art museum or gallery that did not have some of his works on display, most of them sold by mail order by Emyr himself.
These institutions used to submit the works for several weeks to a detailed study by experts, but the result was always the same: the paintings were considered authentic. In all that time, only a couple of drawings were questioned.
The most prolific counterfeiter
In the late 1950s Elmyr lived in Florida, comfortably off but somewhat bored by the nondescript local environment. The FBI would soon ‘encourage’ him to change scenery.
A collector to whom he had sold several works lent his drawings for an exhibition that had to be canceled because it was discovered that two of them (the rest were screened) were not originals.
That episode ended Elmyr’s thirteen-year stay in the United States, where he had become the most prolific and successful forger of the century. His works hung on the walls of museums and institutions, and he had used so many aliases, continually moving from one place to another, that no one was in a position to ascertain the magnitude of his great artistic scam.
His first destination after leaving Florida was Mexico, but it would not take him long to cross the ocean to an island where, he had been told, the most exquisite of the European jet set moved. This is how Elmyr de Hory discovered Ibiza.
And his arrival there coincided with the forger’s meeting with two young men, Legros and Lessard, who would quickly become his partners. Elmyr was tired of dealing with each other, of selling his art, and he wanted to dedicate himself, simply, to painting and enjoying life, giving free rein, now without barriers, to his carved hedonism.
So he reached an agreement with Legros and Lessard whereby they would be in charge of moving his work. And that is how Elmyr’s apocryphal firms began to be sold from Chicago and New York to Switzerland and France, later extending their business to Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Johannesburg or Tokyo.
The ‘picasso’ who fooled Picasso
The incredible story of Elmyr de Hory and his huge collection of forgeries has spawned several films, books and exhibitions.
Legend has it that Legros even sent one of Elmyr’s ‘picasso’s to the artist from Malaga to certify its authenticity. The latter, sure of its authorship with the naked eye but suspicious in the face of reasonable doubt, asked: “How much did the dealer pay for it?” They gave him a fabulous figure, $100,000, to which Picasso replied: “Well, if they’ve paid that much, it must be authentic.”
However, despite the numerous sales, Elmyr’s income began to drop dramatically, and he was only making a few hundred dollars a month.
His own associates would explain years after his death that they themselves were in charge of stealing his part of the income from him, taking advantage of his timid character to force him to continue painting. Aware of the stratagem, this weak character of the swindler nevertheless prevented him from prevailing over the two young men.
The happy days in Spain did not last long, as Legros and Lessard ended up quarreling well into the 1970s, while Elmyr’s work became less and less brilliant.
So many scandals around his name led one of his regular clients, a Texas magnate, to ask for advice on the paintings he had been buying over the years: 44 of the works in his collection, all sold by Elmyr, were false.
Law of Vagrants and Crooks
When the Spanish authorities were alerted to the character, an investigation was opened, but there was no crime or evidence that led to the conviction of the character in the country. It seems that US diplomatic pressure did lead to the application of the Law of Vagrants and Crooks, leading him to be sentenced to two months in jail for homosexuality, living with criminals and lacking demonstrable means of subsistence.
All in all, Elmyr de Hory was able to live the last years of his life in Ibiza in relative tranquility.
When the controversy over the false biography of Howard Huges signed by Clifford Irving broke out, Life magazine chose a portrait of the journalist signed by Elmyr to illustrate its cover under the headline Convict of the Year.
In addition, he came to see an exhibition in Madrid full of pieces made ‘in the style of’ but signed for the first time by ‘Elmyr’. In fact, the forger had become so famous that artists forged his originals.
On December 11, 1976, shortly after receiving the news that he was to be extradited to the United States to stand trial for forgery, Elmyr De Hory chose to take his own life. In this way, the greatest art forger in history would never leave his beloved island of Ibiza.
Three years earlier, Orson Welles would encourage Elmyr’s immortality by shooting the documentary False, a fun cinematographic exercise in which all certainties are questioned, downplaying the importance of what is real as opposed to what is faked.
Is the original or the copy more real? It would not be possible to imagine a better legacy for Elmyr de Hory.
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