Nagy Ildikó szerk.: Nagybánya művészete, Kiállítás a nagybányai művésztelep alapításának 100. évfordulója alkalmából (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 1996/1)

Benedek Katalin: A hamisított Nagybánya

Nagybánya Faked KATALIN BENEDEK The practice of forgery is not something unheard of in Eastern and Central Europe. The main driving force behind forgery is the market, the desire to gain profit. From the viewpoint of qualification, it is immaterial whether a painting is forged entirely or only partially. The case in point can be illustrated by the examples of Béla Iványi Griinwald and Camille Corot. It often happens that the death of an artist is followed by the "dilution" of his oeuvre. A famous name has a magic affect on the audience. The more a forger struggles to create the impression of authenticity, the harder his work will be. He will lack the creativity of real artists. It is well known that even great artists have bad days, and forgers can easily take advantage of this fact. Several volumes have been published on the exciting subject of forgery in twentieth-century art. The Forgers of Art, the Art of Forgers by Frank Arnau describes in detail the technical excellence of fake Van Goghs and Vermeers. Today we are witnessing a boom in the art market, which provides conditions favourable to the production (or the issue with false signature) of artworks trying to recreate, with varying degree of success, the spirituality and style of paintings associated with the Nagybánya school. The first forgeries of the Nagybánya style began to appear in the region after the turn of the century, although it was only after the 1930s that they started to emerge in large quantity. Unscrupulous dealers dumped forged Nagybánya paintings on ethnic Hungarians repatriating from Romania. The most frequently forged artists were: Jenő Maticska, Sándor Ziffer, János Krizsán, Simon Hollósy, János Thorma, and Károly Ferenczy. The Data Service of the Hungarian National Gallery has unmasked such forgeries, documenting in its archives the continuing practice of forging the signatures of Sándor Ziffer, Károly Ferenczy, Vilmos Perlrott Csaba, Béla Czóbel, János Thorma, etc.