Enlarge imageBy Wendel Broere
ZWOLLE, Netherlands (Reuters) - A master of his craft, painter Geert Jan Jansen was always happiest when his works were mistaken for those of other artists.
Jansen, who says he taught himself to paint, turned to forgery when he found it hard to make ends meet by selling his own work. He was so good that some of the artists he copied claimed his works were their own.
Jansen chose ambitious targets, painting in the style of some of the 20th century’s greatest artists -- Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall and fellow Dutchman Karel Appel.
"In the late 1980s, I had an art gallery in Amsterdam and I couldn’t pay the rent on time, that’s how it started," he said in an interview with Reuters.
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Later, working in a secret atelier in his chateau in central France, Jansen produced scores of paintings. He was dubbed "master-forger of the century" by art critics and detectives who investigated his canvasses, prints and charcoal sketches.
Eventually, the law caught up with him and Jansen was sentenced to jail. He served six months in France but is now free in the Netherlands and in negotiations to serve out the rest of his two-year jail term there.
His works, which were locked up for more than a decade in France following the police inquiry, were recently exhibited under his own name for the first time in the Netherlands.
Jansen, a 61-year-old with combed-back silver hair and red-rimmed glasses perched on his forehead, says he did not copy existing pictures.
He says he tried to get into an artist’s soul and create new works -- a couple per hour when he was in the mood.
"With Matisse, it’s all about leaving things out. A line has to be good with one try," Jansen explained showing one of ’his’ Matisses, a charcoal sketch of a sensuous woman.
"He uses one line for the shape of her face. I had to practice it 20 or 30 times. It takes a lot of preparation and my dustbin is always full at the end," he said at the exhibition of his works in the central Dutch town of Zwolle.
"Even the artists thought they were theirs. Several times Appel gave certificates of authenticity to art houses, so did Warhol and Magritte’s heirs," Jansen said.
SPELLING MISTAKE
His works under other artists’ names fetched between 200,000 (135,000 pounds) and 300,000 euros, until he was caught.
"The genius of Geert Jan Jansen is that he masters so many ways of working," said Aegid Tonnaer, an art dealer who helped organise Jansen’s show in Zwolle.
"It’s bizarre he can do paintings in the very physical style of Appel as well as unbelievably detailed paintings of Botero."
Among other tricks, Jansen left paintings in the sun to create a craquelure effect to make them look older.
Other art experts, however, are more critical. Auction house Sotheby’s declined to comment on his paintings, saying Jansen had had enough publicity. Another Dutch art dealer faulted him for polluting the art market, where his works still circulate.
Court documents show that Jansen admitted to making and selling forgeries but he did not show any regret while talking to Reuters, just a hint of annoyance that he had been caught.
On the crime, he simply said: "I sort of admitted it to the court."
Police became involved in 1994 after a spelling mistake on a certificate of authenticity for a Chagall painting roused an auctioneer’s suspicions.
"I spelt ’environ’ (’around’ in French) with an ’s’ when there shouldn’t have been one," said Jansen, who started painting as a child of three.
His atelier, where he produced scores of forgeries in the style of Gustav Klimt, Amedeo Modigliani and Jean Cocteau, was discovered by investigators in his castle in La Chaux in France.
Some 1,600 works including gouaches, lithographic prints, oil paintings and sketches, were seized along with a false passport, false certificates of authenticity and stamps.
Experts called in by the court, however, could not prove the works of art were not authentic, Jansen says.
"The Orleans court called in experts, but they were the same ones who had said earlier my work was the real thing," he said.
The court wanted to destroy all the seized works, but did not as they included several authentic Picassos, Chagalls and Matisses for which Jansen said he had bonafide certificates of authenticity, dating from his days as an art dealer.
With the help of the director of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art at the time, Rudi Fuchs, one third of the works were repatriated to the Netherlands in March this year.
The works now fetch 8,000 to 10,000 euros and after the Zwolle exhibition they will be on show in Amsterdam from December 10 and in Belgium in March.
Jansen is not sorry and happily handed down tips of the trade to a new generation of aspiring artists during a workshop held alongside his show.
"I am teaching them how to make a nice painting, a little Picasso or an Appel, anything they want," he said with a grin.
