The Italian police exposed a group of criminals who have made 5000 pieces of counterfeit and fake letters of about 100 Italian futurist artist Oswaldo Botha

The Italian police exposed a group of criminals involved in counterfeiting of products, and the letters of the Italian artist and futurist Botha Osvaldo (Osvaldo Bot). Among the detained were 70-year-old art historian from Plaisance, a collector and an artist. Now they are under investigation.

U fraudsters were seized near the hundreds of letters, allegedly written by the Marquis bot Spreti Vittorio (Vittorio Spreti), with whom he had in fact never met, as well as 5 thousand (!) of counterfeit works. Swindlers bought at antique shops for a simple drawing paper, copy it to the works of other futurists - for instance, Giacomo Balla (Giacomo Balla) and Fortunatto Depero (Fortunato Depero) - or other artistic movements, and then apply the signature Botha.

False letters as the basis for the exhibition, held in 2006, one of the banks in Plaisance. In her catalog says: «Art Connoisseurs Botha did not mention the name of the Marquis Vittorio Spreti, but they certainly were friends. They continued to talk for more than 20 years, as evidenced by numerous surviving documents ».

The exhibition proved to dozens of forged works of Botha, who in the directory have been described as «the recently discovered» and «not exposed earlier».

first suspected wrong Italian art critic Maurizio Skudiero (Maurizio Scudiero): «As soon as I saw these works, I noticed that they are not in a characteristic of the Botha-style: it was clear that many sketches have been copied in whole or in part, repeated the work of other futurists. But this would not do no representative of this field ». According to Skrudiero, the criminals come from a scientific point of view to the preparation of the plan, but he did was «colossus on clay legs».

Boat Osvaldo (Osvaldo Barbieri) was born in Piacenza in 1895. After the First World War, he began to write landscapes, and then primknul the second wave of futurism in 1929, worked as a sculptor and designer. He died in 1958.

Material prepared Onuchin Catherine, AI

Source: ansa.it , artinvestment.ru