Genuine Fakes

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Painting by John Myatt after Joan Miro’s Sea of Love
(used with permission)

News of the recent arrest of a Long Island art dealer, Glafira Rosales, on charges of scheming to sell forged paintings in the styles of many of the most well-known abstract expressionists, has an interesting back story. It is that of Pei-Shen Qian, the artist suspected to have created the paintings. Qian, now 73, came to New York in his thirties to continue to pursue the artistic career he had begun in China. He took classes at the Art Students League and struggled to sell his art. He was allegedly discovered by Rosales’s partner and boyfriend while attempting to sell art on the street in lower Manhattan. The court papers claim that Mr. Qian then created at least 63 paintings in the styles of Motherwell, Pollock, de Kooning and others, signed with the forged signatures of the artists. The paintings were brokered for more than eighty million dol…