The painting "Black rectangle, red square", which is stored in the gallery of German Dusseldorf and, as was previously thought, was painted by avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich, is a fake. This was reported on Thursday by TASS representative of the museum association "Art Assembly of North Rhine-Westphalia" (Kunstsammlung NRW) Gerd Korintenberg.
"Unfortunately, the author of this painting was not Malevich," he said. According to him, to this conclusion came at once two groups of specially hired experts: the first - from the University of Kiel, the second - from the Technical Institute of Cologne. The picture is dated in 1915, but according to the results of the examination it was established that in reality it was written between 1972 and 1975. In the catalogs of avant-garde works it has appeared since 1975.
"The Art Collection of North Rhine-Westphalia" owns the picture from 2014. The gallery received a gift from the German foundation, and until then it was kept in temporary storage at the Wilhelm Hak Museum in Ludwigshafen. In addition to the "Black rectangle, the red square" in Düsseldorf, about 40 small-size drawings were produced for the authorship of Malevich, but they are still not known. "We would like to know it ourselves," said Corintenberg, answering the relevant question, "Experts are checking them."
Cases when the works of the representatives of the Russian avant-garde are forged, are not uncommon, the head of the gallery Suzanne Genshaymer commented on the situation. "For this reason, even with my predecessor, it was decided to turn to specialists and get conclusions," she said. "A fake must be called a fake, no matter how hard it may be," her words are quoted in a press release from the art gallery.
In 2013, members of an international criminal group were arrested in Germany, selling false pictures for the authorship of Russian avant-garde artists. Scammers copied the style of artists, printed forged certificates and sold paintings for thousands of euros, giving them for the previously unknown work of Malevich, Vasily Kandinsky, Alexei Yavlensky, Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova. Members of the group managed to sell counterfeit goods worth several million euros.