The Forger's Apprentice: Life with the World's Most Notorious Artist

by Mark Forgy

  Before leaving for the airport, he made one final stop at the gallery. Elmyr brought the requested cubist work of Picasso. Surprisingly, it evoked a tepid reaction from the dealer. His lack of enthusiasm surprised Elmyr. It was, after all, more his wife’s interest than his. They agreed on $500 and, as usual, it was a bargain price. The check, however, was good, and it was traveling money to buy new adventures in the land of oil barons and cowboys.

  Another of my favorite photos shows Elmyr dressed as cowboy on the back of a bucking bronco. One hand grips the saddle’s horn. The other waves his hat over his head like a rodeo champion. Even though the horse was a fine example of western taxidermy, Elmyr’s Texan-size grin was authentic. When I asked him about this wildly original souvenir, he explained, “I wanted to see the cowboys and savor the myths of those places I read about in my youth. When I went there, few Texans had much of a sense of geography outside the Lone Star State. They kept asking me about my accent, but I tired of the blank looks from people when I told them I was Hungarian. One day, when asked where I was from, I just said I was from Paris.” The inquisitive Texan appeared flummoxed and said, “That’s impossible. I know everyone in Paris.” Bewildered by his assertion, Elmyr’s rejoinder was “Well, Paris is a big place.” It seems that Elmyr didn’t know there was a Paris, Texas, and the Texan knew nothing of Paris, France. The snapshot only confirms what I witnessed about Elmyr’s character. He dove headlong into whatever captured his interest and seemed as pleased with his cultural immersion as anthropologist Louis Leaky would be in a burlap sack full of old bones.

  Los Angeles disappeared in a crimson sunset behind the silver wing of a TWA plane. Elmyr headed for Houston with a connecting flight in Dallas. All went according to plan but for a mix-up with his luggage that caused him to miss his plane to Houston. It left him, as Elmyr expressed in his own parlance, “stucked in Dallas.” This temporary inconvenience turned out to be a good thing, he soon discovered.

  He checked into the Adolphus Hotel and picked up a copy of the newspaper at the front desk. On its front page, one article caught his immediate notice. Fashion designer Jacques Fath, an old friend from Paris, was in town to promote a show of his work at the Nieman Marcus department store. Since the Adolphus was the best hotel in town, Elmyr called and asked what room Fath had. He guessed right. It was one o’clock in the morning, but he phoned his room anyway. Fath answered and was less shocked by the hour of the call than by hearing the voice of the caller. He was delighted to reconnect with his old friend. Elmyr mentioned that he was on his way to Houston. Fath urged him to stay a while and give Dallas a chance. Why not come with him to a party given by the Marcuses tomorrow night, he suggested.

  Elmyr had no way of knowing that this would be the most exclusive conduit to Texan society anybody could wish for. Jacques introduced Elmyr to the Hunts, Halliburtons, and the Murchisons. They all entertained on a big Texan scale, lavishly and generously. Elmyr’s personable nature and the fact that he wore a monocle made his old-world charm irresistible in this relaxed world of the southern drawl. His delayed flight stretched into a four-month sojourn. Through his new network of who’s who of the Dallas elite, he was invited to do some portraits, but soon found out their ideas of art were different from his. “If they didn’t look like colored photographs from a country fair, they didn’t like them. I’m afraid I was a little too modern for their taste,” he lamented. “I liked all these people immensely. They were delightful, open, and always invited me into their homes.”

  He went on to say, “I met a woman who inherited a lot of money when her husband died. She lived in Lubbock, in west Texas, and once sent her private plane to pick me up one day in Dallas to fly me to her ranch for lunch. She later invited me to join her on vacation in Colorado Springs at the Broadmoor Hotel. That’s where I met Huntington Hartford, the A&P heir. When they told me he owned some grocery stores, I was used to thinking in terms of the greengrocer on the corner. I never had any idea they meant hundreds. Hunt was also very charming and invited me to stay with him at his place in Hollywood. At the time when I knew him, I don’t think he knew the difference between an oil painting and a watercolor. I certainly would never have guessed that he would one day have an art museum named after him.”

  One discovery Elmyr was pleased to make in the Lone Star State was that the art dealers in Dallas had not only heard of Matisse, they were thrilled that Elmyr was willing to part with the few he had left from his family’s collection. By autumn, he was seriously considering Hartford’s invitation. September was a beautiful month in southern California, but what month wasn’t, he thought.

  Elmyr found out that Texas was a world unto itself, but it was a vast and varied state. Not everyone owned a horse, oil wells, or a ranch the size of Connecticut, although some of those he met did. During his return flight to Los Angeles, he reflected on his successful foray into an astounding circle of string-tie-wearing aristocracy, newly ordained by their sudden wealth. Money separated a supposedly classless society as much, if not more, than titles separated nobility from commoners in Europe. He recalled the anecdote one of the Marcus family told him of the farmer coming into their elegant department store looking for a winter coat for his wife. Elmyr smiled through its retelling. “He said he wanted a fur one. When he saw the expensive coats, he picked one out, a full-length chinchilla. When told the price—$25,000—he thought for a moment and said OK. The clerk then informed him that it was a fine, delicate fur and required careful handling. ‘Well, if it’s that fragile, you better give me two,’” he responded.

  For years now, Elmyr had been honing his skills as an art forger. It was a craft requiring the same discipline, attention to detail, and dedicated practice that he learned during his years at the Akademie Heimann in Munich. He progressed from drawings to gouache and watercolors to oil paintings. With every step, he mastered techniques specific to the different media. Elmyr always made one important distinction to segregate himself from the common conception of a forger. “I’m not a copyist,” he insisted. “I never copied anyone’s work. I worked in the style of a certain artist. It could be in the style of Matisse, Picasso, or Modigliani. For example, they often found a subject they liked and did many variations of that subject. Mine might be another variation, but I never copied any of those works that already exit.” His comfortable rationalization distanced him from that distasteful word—forger. “In the style of…” It sounded cleverer, less illegal. While this was not the career path he wanted, he was determined to show at least to himself, if not the world, that he was the equal of other artists who enjoyed a commercial success that had so far eluded him.

  One day while visiting the former star of the Ziegfeld Follies, Fanny Brice, at her home in Hollywood, Elmyr noticed a large portrait done by Modigliani she had recently acquired. When he hesitantly inquired what she paid for the painting, she readily admitted it was $12,000. “She died not long after. I ran into her son later in New York, and he mentioned that someone offered him twenty-five-thousand dollars for the painting. Dealers and serious connoisseurs really prefer oil paintings, as they are the most desirable products of a painter’s oeuvre. The rest they commonly refer to as ‘paper,’” he commented.

  Elmyr could only watch with mixed emotions as the prices of works by artists whom he sat with and drank coffee at Le Dome or La Rotonde steadily rose, and he was no nearer advancing his career than he had been then. It seemed to him that if one was not already established, prospective buyers, gallery owners, or collectors had neither the knowledge nor inclination to spend much money on unknown artists. There appeared to be one exception to this opinion, however. A new movement called abstract expressionism was gaining currency in the art world. It was bold, colorful, exciting, and, coinciding with the mid-century modern era of design, resonated with notions of freshness. It was also championed by many dealers as a means to “invest” in art, which, for the first time, made the purchase of fine art a commodity like stocks and bonds, and more accessible to an
increasingly affluent public. Elmyr viewed this thinking as fallacious and deceptive. It also left him despairing at the thought that any chance to establish himself and a career may have passed him by, making him and his art old-fashioned.

  It were as though he had been given a fait accompli to which he had one recourse: do something there was a demand for, something he could supply, that would give him the means to make a living from his craft. Besides, he was unlikely to find a well-paying niche as a bon vivant.

  Elmyr went back to New York in 1949, taking an apartment on East Sixty-Fourth Street. Here, he would attempt his first Modigliani painting. The money from just one sale would allow him to live worry-free for a long time. New York was like a huge warehouse full of antiques brought over from Europe by poor immigrants and wealthy collectors alike. He knew precisely what he needed, an old painting on a French stretcher. That was the foundation of a newly created artwork and essential to any hope of passing as authentic. He found one that was perfect for what he had in mind, measuring about twelve inches by twenty inches. The mundane pastoral theme vaguely reminiscent of Millais transformed into the portrait of a young girl with a rosy hue of freshly pinched cheeks. It exhibited the subliminal sexuality so familiar to Modigliani’s style. Elmyr thought it a success and wanted to show it to a friend. The actor Montgomery Clift lived nearby. He and Elmyr were already well acquainted through mutual friends. Elmyr invited “Monty” over to his apartment and purposefully said nothing about the painting.

  Elmyr reminisced about its private debut. “Monty knew something about art, too, so I was curious to know his reaction. When he came over, we had a drink, and he noticed immediately the Modigliani and thought it was beautiful. He was interested in it, but I wouldn’t sell it to him because he was a friend.” He went on, “There was a gallery called the Niveau Gallery, and I took it there after I baked it on a low heat in my kitchen oven for a few days to dry the oil paints. Depending on the impasto [thickness] oil paint can take years to dry completely. In those days, it was common to consult another expert, but they often made their decision on instinct. I spoke their language and had the right background, and my prices were always attractive. Invariably, they always said yes. The part I didn’t like was the inevitable haggling over price. Anyway, we agreed on six thousand dollars for the Modigliani.” It was, for him, “the start of something big,” as the song lyric goes.

  That same year, for the first time, he consigned work for sale at auction with the Kende Galleries on Fifty-Seventh Street and sold to M. Knoedler & Co., according to Elmyr. While he stayed in a suite at the Waldorf Astoria, he rented a room at Sloane House, a YMCA. Confiding in a longtime friend from Paris, Jean Louis, what he was doing, his incredulous friend visited him one day at the YMCA, where he found Elmyr in a paint-splattered smock working on a new Modigliani painting. Elmyr demurred, “Well, mon cher, I can’t get paint on the carpet at the Waldorf, can I?”

  By early 1951, Elmyr resumed his tour of America, visiting Florida for the first time; he enjoyed the Sunshine State and especially Miami. From there he traveled to New Orleans, with its reminders of its French heritage; its Creole cuisine was savory, and he loved its hot and spicy flavors. His passion for this kind of food was most evident when perspiration would trickle down from his temples, indicating that it was acceptably piquant. Once, wanting to amuse himself, he offered me a sliver of the smallest red pepper I had ever seen. It looked innocuous enough. Its five-alarm burning sensation literally had me hopping, tearfully running to the kitchen for water. He found the spectacle suitably entertaining. To assuage his guilt for the prank, he recounted an incident when he went to Colombo, Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Having just arrived, he went to a good restaurant, where he ordered a curried dish. “Do you want it hot or normal?” the waiter asked. “Hot,” Elmyr replied. “When it came, I took one bite—it was so hot I fell off my chair!” he said. It was my turn to laugh.

  New Orleans’ vieux quartier was as close as he would get to Europe for some time. Its easygoing lifestyle and lively nightspots made him want to spend the winter there. “I found a pleasant apartment on the rue Royale,” he recounted. This was a time before credit cards became so common. Cash was king, but his Matisses and Modiglianis turned out to be as good as legal tender. They, too, would find new homes among the culturally savvy clientele of some smooth-talking local art dealers. Perhaps for his own diversion, he began painting some of his own work.

  He met playwright Tennessee Williams and writer/journalist Robert Ruark during his stay. Ruark had an apartment above the Old Absinthe House, and its owner possessed a historical museum. He asked Elmyr, “Would you be interested in two commissions? I’d like a painting of the blacksmith’s shop and Café Lafitte on Bourbon Street. He then introduced me to the mayor of the city, Morrison deLesseps,” Elmyr added, with noticeable name-dropping pride. His Magyar charm must have duly impressed the mayor, who then approached Elmyr with an unusual proposition. “Would you be interested in restoring several vintage historical paintings at city hall?” he asked. Elmyr accepted the challenge to do something close to what he was secretly doing already. Only now, it was under the aegis of special invitation of the mayor, himself! For the next few months, he labored to repair age-ravaged canvases commemorating the South’s struggle in the Civil War, or War of Northern Aggression, as some southerners called it. In a gesture of civic appreciation on the completion of his task, the city paid him five thousand dollars and bestowed on him honorary citizenship and a key to the city. Unfortunately, he could not share the ironic humor of the situation with anyone. He suspected that it was unusual that illegal aliens receive these kinds of accolades.

  Thinking this might be a propitious moment to renew his expired French passport, he filled out the appropriate forms at the French Consulate. They denied the application. His California driver’s license would have to suffice for any form of identification. It was only good, of course, if the name on the license concurred with the alias he was then using.

  His curiosity once more exhausted, he left New Orleans and headed north into the heartland, ending up in Kansas City for a few months, for reasons that he never made entirely clear. Like many American cities, it had an art museum—two, actually—and he was about to make their acquaintance. According to Elmyr, the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and the Atkins Museum of Fine Arts bought a Matisse and a Picasso, respectively. In St. Louis, his sanguine Renoir nudes “proved to be popular,” he claimed. In Chicago, he established a good relation with a certain curator at the Chicago Art Institute.

  Rather than traveling to these cities with the innocence of an eager explorer as he once felt, he realized his wanderings assumed the burdensome drudgery of an itinerant salesman. The dreary sameness of hotel rooms, the absence of someone special in his life, being reduced to making a living that at any moment could land him in jail all began to take a psychological and physical toll. Perhaps he had a little more time on his hands in the Midwest or noticed his increasingly graying hair in the bathroom mirrors of monotonously interchangeable hotel rooms. He felt adrift, as meandering as his itinerary, and was restless for a change. Was it too late to establish a career as a painter, doing his own work? This is what all his professional training was supposed to accomplish.

  For the last six years, he told himself he would do the “fakes” (oh, how he hated that word) only as a last resort. If he had to tally up his output since ’46, he wasn’t sure he could do it. What was the point? It was just numbers, and by his own admission he was never very good at math. Besides, he didn’t feel compelled to keep anything as incriminating as a ledger. He wasn’t an accountant.

  Deciding to go back to California seemed to make sense. Moving, after all, was easy. His entire worldly wealth was the cash in his pocket, elegantly tailored suits and shirts, some jewelry, and a few pairs of good shoes that he could pack in his leather luggage. Paint supplies, he could send Railway Express to whatever his destination was. He was a nomad, but a chic one. Even if
he wanted to stop moving from place to place, he couldn’t risk languishing in one spot long enough for the authorities and his past to catch up to him.

  Elmyr had spent enough time in Los Angeles not to confuse Pershing Square with Bel Air, yet that is where he elected to live until he could make enough money from the sales of his own paintings. There, for eleven dollars a week, he found a room with a kitchenette. It was not a suite at the Waldorf with expensive carpeting to ruin from some errant dabs of oil paint. For the first time in his life, he imposed restrictions on his spending, abandoning ingrained habits that by force of his nature were difficult to break. He vowed to avoid buying his $300 Knize suits, Brooks Brother’s shoes, or dining out. This was as close to a meager working-class life that the fugitive aristocrat dared to venture. He bought canvas boards for his paintings instead of high quality canvas on stretchers.

  The art galleries he approached were not interested in offering him an exhibition. A couple deigned to take a painting or two on consignment, but would not guarantee they would prominently display them or even hang them at all. Every honest effort to go straight was an egoshattering disappointment. Showing an inordinate tenacity and honorable asceticism, he endured the wholesale disinterest and snubs to all his efforts at earning a gainful living from his work. It was galling, since he knew perfectly well that every rebuff would have been entirely different if those canvases bore another, better-known signature. He gave himself what he thought would be an adequate amount of time to get at least one big break—six months.