Collection of fakes: as a millionaire deceived by $ 10 million

But there was another mysterious story from the art world. It occurred in 2012, but it started even earlier, many years before.

In 2012, the former top manager of Transneft, Igor Voznyakov, discovered that his small collection of works of domestic brilliant artists was, in fact, a forgery. It can be assumed that some hunters for valuable art objects stole the originals and pods fakes, but most likely it was more prosac: the businessman deceived the experts. In general, it was not difficult to do this, since he himself was not very versed in art at the time. He had money in the 1990s, and he decided to invest them in artists whose work he knew from school.

He had his dealer, an analysis was made.

However, the same experts, with a difference of several years, gave diametrically opposite conclusions about the paintings: first, they were recognized as originals, and then - by fakes, by an unknown author.

Voznyakov would be angry in this case, psycho. But he, actually, did so. He was angry and crazy. And he arranged an exhibition on which he collected all the fakes. And I attached two certificates to them as art objects: "before" and "after". To make it clearer it was clear that once this picture was considered a work of Roerich, and this one was of Aivazovsky, and now all of them are works of a brush by an unknown artist.

It is interesting, of course, to find out how it happened that the examination was "mistaken" in several pictures in a row. Moreover, the best specialists from the Hermitage and the Tretyakov Gallery evaluated the work. The official version sounds like expected: the experts said that it took so much time, we began to (better analyze) to approach the issue more qualitatively, learned to use X-rays and other gizmos.

Other experts, those who had nothing to do with it, said, they say, what do you guys want? It's one thing to confirm the authenticity before buying, another - before the exhibition.

However, as experts could be so seriously mistaken, it is unclear. For example, in the blog of a well-known lady in the narrow circles who understands the pictures, there are photographs of those same imitations and comments on the topic of how they look alive. The lady says that they look shabby even without examination. But it's hard to say without seeing the pictures.

There is a truth, there are one more nuance and one version. Around this time, the businessman decided to divorce his wife. Divorce was scandalous. And in the media, there were several interviews with the ex-spouse, who went to court for 5 euros and half the car. In the interview, she said that an independent examination was started just in the process of divorce when it was necessary to divide the property. She is sure that the pictures are actually real.

But it's all about money. And what pictures?

Among them, there is, for example, the painting, which allegedly wrote Roerich, under the title "Guests arrived." Now it is assumed that this is a collage of several works by Roerich, which was made quite recently. For him, the author took a little from Sadko, a little from the Slavs on the Dnieper, turned out to be a brand-new Roerich.

Or here Kustodiev's fake is written, most likely, from a real outline of the artist. But they wrote it whitewash, which at the time of writing the picture has not yet been invented.