The perfect con: a prestigious gallery, a mysterious foreign collector, a brilliant forger, and nearly $80 million in fake art. In THE DEVIL WEARS ROTHKO, veteran filmmaker of acclaimed documentary Made You Look (Netflix), Barry Avrich, unravels the extraordinary scandal that brought down one of America's oldest and most important art galleries.
It began when Glafira Rosales, a shadowy art dealer, walked into the Upper East Side Knoedler Gallery with what appeared to be a valuable Mark Rothko painting. Gallery director Ann Freedman staked her reputation on the multiplying works from Rothko, Pollock, Motherwell and others that Rosales offered, persuading wealthy collectors to pay millions. When the fraud unraveled, Freedman claimed to be just another victim- fooled by the very deception she had championed.
Through exclusive interviews with Freedman and other key players, Avrich reveals:
- The master forger who fooled the experts.
- The shady business of provenances.
- Fine art's epidemic of fakes, including that 40% of The Met's collection is fake.
- A play-by-play of a former Gucci chairman's lawsuit over an $8 million fake.
- The complex web of scandals surrounding the Hammer family.
- Glafira Rosales' daughter's high-end gallery sells works strikingly similar to the trove of fakes.
- The fallout: from quiet closures to violent threats, and whether any of it will stop this from happening again.
THE DEVIL WEARS ROTHKO asks: has anything changed or could this easily happen again?
Barry Avrich is a veteran documentary filmmaker and producer who has directed and produced over seventy films including Made You Look, Born Hungry, Prosecuting Evil, Blurred Lines, and David Foster: Off The Record. Avrich has authored five books including Moguls. Monsters and Madmen (2017), and built the world's first movie theater in a hospital.
