When a museum, and especially an art museum, discovers that it preserves and exhibits fake works, it is a disaster. On the one hand because the authenticity of art is one of the characteristics that make it unique, admirable and valuable. On the other hand because museums are assigned the function of guaranteeing the preservation of the material collective memory and should not fall victim to deception. Therefore, when in 2016 it was certified that the Girona Art Museum had acquired six years earlier three fake works attributed to the Renaissance painter Pere Mates, it was a shock.
The exhibition False True. The art of deception wants to tell a story of forgeries that are very much our own, comparing fake works with other genuine ones. But it also wants to go a little further, and apart from showing the results of the studies, especially the analyses, which have allowed us to ensure the falsity of some paintings and the authenticity of others, we wanted to reflect more broadly on the sordid world of forgeries and art forgers.
Without intending to serve as an exculpation for those who use their skill as a tool of deception, the exhibition aims to review the most notorious and well-known cases of art forgery in recent times, the protagonists of the deceptions and their strategies and motivations. At the same time, it has sought to bring to light fake works from different Catalan museums, from the National Museum of Art of Catalonia itself, to the one in Sabadell, which had already explored this same path years ago, Valls, Montserrat or Solsona, to name the most outstanding cases. All this to understand that the art of deception is very old and at the same time very modern and that it leaves no one exempt from falling for it, neither museum institutions, nor experts, nor collectors. Even today, as we write these lines, new cases are coming to light that shake art museums and collections, too often defenseless in the face of the intertwined strategies of deception.
All the works in the exhibition are included in this catalogue, translated into English, which includes texts by the exhibition curators, Joan Bosch and Francesc Miralpeix; by the director of the Girona Art Museum, Carme Clusellas; and by Josep Paret, from the Centre for the Restoration of Movable Property of Catalonia.
The catalogue can be purchased at the Museu d’Art shop and also online at the Generalitat de Catalunya bookstore.
