Art Forgery Stories Germany
The white paint that exposed Beltracchi
A painting attributed to Heinrich Campendonk looked right until a laboratory examined its white pigment.
Red Picture with Horses looked like an Expressionist canvas from 1914. Its angular horses and bright blocks of colour fit the attribution to Heinrich Campendonk. Wolfgang Beltracchi had supplied the painting that the market wanted to find.
A laboratory found titanium white in the paint. For the work as dated, that result was a problem the attribution could not explain. Scientist Nicholas Eastaugh later told The Art Newspaper that the pigment had apparently entered the painting through a commercial paint Beltracchi believed was suitable.
The finding helped lead to Beltracchi’s arrest and conviction. The case turned on what the eye could not see: a trace of material with a history of its own.
