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

by Mark Forgy

  Around this time I received an e-mail from Scott Richter, an art professor at Cooper Union in New York. He had also learned of the exhibition in Minnesota and possessed a genuine fake Elmyr-Modigliani obtained by his parents in a curious way. According to Scott, Elmyr, who lived in Miami Beach in the mid 1950s, was forced to flee for passing bad checks. He had sold them some small Picasso drawings and wanted to sell them the Modigliani but instead left it behind with them before he fled town. Colette Loll Marvin discovered Scott through a friend and asked if he’d loan his “Modigliani” for the exhibition she was curating for the Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington DC. Its focus was art crimes, such as fakes, forgeries, and stolen and looted treasures. Colette was director of public and international relations for the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA). What was particularly intriguing about the Modigliani ingenue staring from its frame in Richter’s collection was the small brass plaque indicating the artist’s name: Amedeo Modigliani. It hung for ten years in the University of Miami Art Museum, its originality never questioned until the Richters decided to remove it after its decade-long loan only after Elmyr’s story began appearing in the international press and an article in Look magazine in 1968.

  Prior to this discovery, an old friend from Ibiza, Chris Allaire, took the Jitney (bus running between Manhattan and Long Island) one day. Chris was instrumental in my writing this book, and acquainted with Elmyr for many years when he lived on Ibiza. He began a conversation with the woman seated next to him. She owned an art gallery in the Hamptons, so Elmyr’s name soon surfaced. “I know his story,” she said. “Do you know Peter Schults?” Peter was a longtime friend of Elmyr’s, and although I’d never met him, I knew he would offer a new perspective. Chris got his phone number for me and I contacted him. To my delight, Peter also knew Jean Louis, a character of mythic stature whose name and presence appear frequently in the Elmyr saga. Elmyr mentioned numerous instances of Jean Louis traveling to New York, Hollywood, Rome, Kansas City, Mexico City, Paris, and being aware of Elmyr’s fraudulent activities. Thanks to Peter I was able to meet Jean Louis in Paris in 2011. Colette Marvin, who was living in Paris at this time, accompanied me so I could interview him for this book. Few had as accurate a view of Elmyr’s secrets as did Jean Louis.

  I possessed a trove of photos of nameless people, though none provided a clue that connected Jean Louis to any of those images. Elmyr said he had dark hair, was thin, attractive, intelligent, and “came from a good family.” The “good family” angle was the societal stamp of approval that meant so much to him, the human equivalent to that Underwriter’s Laboratories tag on small appliances that guaranteed you would not burst into flames when you used it. I think how much easier Elmyr’s life, or all our lives, would be if people came with that little label protecting us from unexpected personal disaster. We then might never read headlines as “Nun Arrested in Shooting Spree.”

  Jean Louis came from old money, old enough to have infused snobbery and disdain for the likes of the Rothschilds and anyone else hopeful that new money would accrue acceptability in a society laden with anti-Semitism and class prejudice. It was that odd bias that stratified the Jewish community, establishing a social pecking order internally that to a lesser degree mirrored the discrimination many non-Jews felt toward them. Some of Jean Louis’s family, like many French Jews, could not escape the holocaust, deportation to concentration camps, and methodical extermination during German occupation in World War II. He, however, survived the Nazi plague that infected Europe by fleeing to Spain and ultimately joining the Free French forces that landed at Toulon in 1944 to help liberate his country.

  Peter Schults told me he introduced Jean Louis to Elmyr in Los Angeles in the early 1950s. It may have been the universal lure of glamour and ease of the California lifestyle that prompted Jean Louis’s westcoast foray. Peter met Elmyr in Hollywood, when Elmyr tried to pick him up. Although Peter rebuffed his overtures, they established a friendship that brought Jean Louis into the picture. Elmyr had already made friends within the film community. Peter recounted a conversation in which Elmyr talked about his friend Rita Hayworth. Jean Louis was starstruck and implored Elmyr to arrange a meeting with the famous actress. Elmyr set up a luncheon. Peter and Elmyr showed up without Jean Louis, who had became distracted by a siren of his preferred gender along Hollywood Boulevard and missed their date. Elmyr never repeated the offer to introduce them.

  It is second-hand stories such as these that corroborate the life I knew in Elmyr’s company and give credibility to the extraordinary events and people that entwine this tale. While I don’t recall Elmyr ever telling me this anecdote, there were countless others laced with celebrity name-dropping. Herein is the challenge. It was in Elmyr’s nature to appropriate descriptive detail and thought any narrative worthy of one’s attention would sound better if it resembled the lushness of a Raymond Chandler novel. He felt obliged to make it memorable and a little artistic license was just fine. That these stories wavered on occasion in their retelling, I cannot write off as deliberate deceit. Dr. Charles V. Ford, in his insightful book Lies! Lies! Lies!: The Psychology of Deceit, explains memories this way:

  Our memories of past events are not like computer files but are highly malleable, fluid in time and space, and reflective of our recent needs. Memories are being continuously reconstructed; the past is not fixed in memory. Rather, we remember the past in terms of our current emotions, experiences, and prejudices (Swartz 1984).

  PARIS

  It was 2011, early March in Paris. The air was cold, but not enough to impede the crocuses and daffodils from blooming in the sunlit Luxembourg Gardens. Colette, my wife Alice, and I stood before the unadorned facade of an art deco apartment building with its smooth stucco curves and industrial glass block. Colette pressed the buzzer opposite Jean Louis’s name. A moment later a voice crackled in French, asking who was there. We announced ourselves and heard the electronic latch click on the wrought-iron-grilled glass door. Traversing an inner courtyard, I looked up to see the side of a landlocked ocean liner. Round porthole windows and sleek tubular steel balconies allowed the ship’s passengers inward views of its timeless simplicity in this marriage of techno-minimalism and stackable living.

  Jean Louis greeted us, holding the apartment door open. His greatnephew Philippe was there to help translate if we needed. Jean Louis’s slightly curly dark hair had a hint of gray, far less than mine, though he was over thirty years older. Dressed in charcoal trousers, open-collared shirt, and camel sweater, he welcomed us in deliberate but perfect English. “Please…come in.” He gestured to the sofa. We sat down. I told him how much I appreciated his sharing his time, allowing us to pry a little into the past. I said I knew he and Elmyr had a long friendship, shared many experiences throughout the years, and that I thought of him in almost legendary terms, as Elmyr talked about him so much. “Peter gave you an early draft of the book I’ve been working on about Elmyr and my life with him,” I said, “and I believe it would add so much to the story to get your perspective on his life.” He was ninety-two, a declaration that came up more than once during our meeting. It was offered more by way of disclaimer than source of pride. I asked him questions specific to what he knew about Elmyr and when he knew it. I could see the despair and frustration in his eyes as answers eluded his grasp—like the fisherman whose line slackens as the trophy catch frees itself just short of his fingertips. His distress was visible each time he considered my questions but had to say, “I don’t remember.” I felt more compassion over his struggle to recapture things he once knew than disappointment at my dashed hopes for his valuable recollections. If his small living room were a courtroom, he revealed nothing incriminating, only to say that Elmyr always knew interesting people and “I enjoyed his company.” Nor did he see anything particularly disturbing about Elmyr’s art crimes, but seemed more amused that he was privy to his secrets than alarmed by them. His nonjudgmental sentiment seemed odd in view of a story Peter Sc
hults shared with me. Jean Louis, according to Peter, traveled with two small Renoir paintings, dear to him as souvenirs from his family and for the colorful charm of the impressionist’s works. Once, when Jean Louis and Elmyr were together in New York, Elmyr took the two Renoirs and sold them to the art dealer Paul Rosenberg. Later, he confessed his perfidy to Jean Louis. Contrite and tearful, Elmyr begged forgiveness for this act of betrayal, insisting he would redeem the paintings. He never did.

  Jean Louis told me he had to buy them back with the dealer’s markup included. Surprisingly, this did not ruin their friendship. Jean Louis sighed, “Elmyr always had money problems.” Indeed, a mystery to Jean Louis, who never had any. They managed to overcome this breach of trust, and their relationship thrived for another twenty years. A remarkable testimony to the marrow of both men, especially as it would be understandable if Jean Louis had immediately jettisoned Elmyr for stealing from a friend. Yet, I could see a wistful glimmer in his eyes when Jean Louis looked at me that Parisian afternoon, giving a slight shrug, and relegating this story to those facts of life one must simply accept and then move on. This does, however, reveal a side of Elmyr he would never have volunteered or probably admitted to me. It also shows that he was careful to keep those unpalatable truths from staining the self-image he constantly curated.

  Our conversation wasn’t yielding all I had hoped for in our allotted time before fatigue overwhelmed him. Jean Louis could not add any insight into Elmyr’s family, only to say that our recent discoveries were all new to him, and he couldn’t recall Elmyr talking about his family. Given their years of association, and Elmyr’s fixation with who was connected to whom and how, this seems unlikely. Even though Elmyr could drop some affectations because his deepest secret was revealed, it remained important to him that his self-spun history appeared convincing, especially to those with legitimate social pedigrees like Jean Louis. Thus establishing some element of believability in the persona he carefully crafted was essential to his own self-esteem. It once more amounted to camouflage, manufacturing the appearance of gentility to mitigate a brutal law of nature that stalked him relentlessly, that made him predator or prey in a world where he only knew one way to survive, although it made him a criminal. And that was at odds with the standards of the propriety he aspired to and had faith in. It was as though every ploy of trickery and dishonesty were capsulated in some tumor, living, feeding off its host with only a thin membrane keeping this disreputable activity from infecting the healthy image he wanted others to see, segregating his illusory self from reality. Selective ethics afforded him the means of nourishing his psychic health as well. This process of creating his own “personal myth” is described here in Dr. Charles Ford’s book:

  We also present ourselves to others duplicitously, playing certain roles and providing selective information about ourselves. Responses from others confirm and help mold the resultant myth. Each person’s personal myth is unique and serves to mediate between the internal world of illusions and the external material world; the myth conditions the way we transact our business in the external world (Swartz, 1984).

  Even if Elmyr’s life and identity were riddled with invention and colored by self-deception, I wanted to replace much of the standard storyline with facts. It was sadly evident that Jean Louis was not the font of behind-the-scenes truths that would chip away the mythology that had become dogma these past forty years.

  For a moment we all seemed lost in a labyrinth without exit when the doorbell rang. A man strolled in, an old friend named Pierre. We stood and introduced ourselves. Pierre’s round, tanned face, beaming smile, and stocky body gave him a physical presence one could not ignore. He and Jean Louis went back decades. “Pierre is my godfather,” Philippe explained. Jean Louis mentioned my longtime relationship with Elmyr. Raising his arms as though finding a long-lost friend, Pierre sparkled. “I knew Elmyr! I went with him to the flea markets when he was looking for old paintings to use for his fakes.” Laughter erupted with this surprising admission, affirming once more that Elmyr’s secret life was accruing a larger audience familiar with his criminal career. However perilous this inside knowledge may have been, and loaded with potential disaster for Elmyr, he still enjoyed an immunity that defies logic. I have the impression that many of those who were privy to the reality of his activities simply did not care or may have thought they weren’t grave enough to land him in hell. Anyway, it seems deceit did not grate on Gallic sensibilities, or not to the degree that tightens sphincter muscles of some with Puritan ancestry. Pierre transported us though sweeping gestures, his constant grin and amused eyes, how Elmyr would pick up an old canvas he found, run his fingertips across the fabric back. “‘This is from Anvers (Antwerp).’ He knew just by the feel if the canvas was from Antwerp, Brusselles, or Paris.” Pierre then gestured how Elmyr would scrape away the old surface oil paint down to the white lead primer coat, prepping it for its rebirth as a modern masterpiece, albeit a beautiful bastard. He leaned forward in his chair, savoring the shameless pleasure of imparting old secrets and deeming our celestial trajectory the perfect planetary alignment to do so.

  As if this fresh anecdotal insight weren’t delightful enough, Pierre also offered his own background. He too was an artist who had worked in the employ of another Hungarian painter, the op-artist Victor Vasarely. Pierre said Vasarely had an atelier and staff of four to six artists who worked for him. Each would submit a “maquette,” a scale model of a painting done in his style. If he approved, each assistant would produce a larger version of the work, which Vasarely signed when finished. His admission enthralled us. Philippe then added, “I’ve known you my whole life, and I never knew that about you.” Pierre’s joy in sharing this pearl lapsed into mime as he zipped his lips, as if to say, “Everyone has secrets.” Some are just more closely guarded than others. Pierre’s face reanimated as he declared, “Elmyr made original fakes, and I made fake originals!” Our laughter likely disturbed the neighbors. Given Colette’s dedication to detecting art crimes, our afternoon chat may have begun resembling a smokeless corner of a men’s club where members exude an esprit de corps and share intimacies with an understood discretion.

  The Research Trail

  These various witnesses provide testimonies that paint a different picture of Elmyr, and are at odds with the “official story” dictated to Clifford Irving in Elmyr’s 1969 biography and that also cast doubt on elements of Irving’s account. Many of the new findings made since the Hillstrom exhibition I owe to the serious historical investigation led by Colette Marvin. In May of 2010, she arranged for translators to review documents and personal correspondence I had saved from Elmyr. Several letters in Hungarian between Elmyr and his brother Istvan revealed secrets kept from me and most everyone. The small script on onionskin paper tell of the complicity between them in manufacturing fake birth certificates using Elmyr’s alleged family name, Hory. We also located records listing Elmyr’s brother and mother as holocaust survivors, learning also that his mother had not divorced Elmyr’s father as he claimed (when Elmyr was sixteen), and that she survived until the 1960s. There remained some mystery about the fate of Elmyr’s father, as we were uncertain of his first name, although we knew their real family name was Hoffmann. Elmyr’s mother’s maiden name was Irene Tenner, and she was Jewish. Elmyr told me his father was Catholic, but for the moment we could not verify that. We also had addresses where the family lived at in Budapest, and these, we thought, might provide a glimpse into the socioeconomic status of the family, a surer indication than stories subject to the embroidery of an expert storyteller.

  Budapest Sock Exchange, Liberty Square (1907) copy

  At the time of Elmyr’s birth in 1906, the family lived in Budapest’s fifth district at Sétatér 2. What the family would have seen from their apartment was a construction site that would soon become the Budapest Stock Exchange at Liberty Square, an imposing Beaux Arts style building with manicured gardens. It was what the British refer to as a “good address.” Thi
s suggests the family enjoyed some bourgeois comfort and was upwardly mobile, having moved from a more working-class district after his brother was born in 1901. Andrea Megyes, a Hungarian art historian and scholar, also pointed out that it was not uncommon for apartment dwellers of varying income levels to live in the same building. If this was indeed the case with Elmyr’s family, she posited that the models for his class ambitions could have begun here in close quarters with wealthier, perhaps titled neighbors. Nevertheless, the savoir faire with which Elmyr carried himself in the company of genuine aristocrats always appeared natural to me, as though this was a behavior learned early in his life.

  Elmyr, with his mother and aunt – circa 1916

  Mary Doering, professor of costume design at Smithsonian Associates, examined the family photo of Elmyr, his mother, and his aunt, taken at his grandparent’s home in Billéd, Hungary. She wrote, “the clothing looks fashionable, solidly middle class or perhaps uppermiddle class.” However, she dismissed the notion that their dress would suggest an aristocratic status.

  The “De Laszlo” Portrait

  One of the most intriguing questions we hoped to answer was the origin of the mysterious family portrait left to me when Elmyr died. It was a painting of Elmyr and his brother. In the lower right-hand corner of the canvas, it bore the signature “P.A. de Laszlo.” This picture alone, if authentic, could be viewed as unimpeachable evidence supporting Elmyr’s claim to membership in Europe’s landed gentry. When John Singer Sargent stopped accepting commissions in 1907, Philip de Laszlo became the preferred portraitist of kings, presidents, and mavens of the social elite. The sweep of his brushwork and ease of execution made him as prolific as he was popular. According to the De Laszlo Archive Trust in London, his body of work numbers in the thousands, many of which have been lost over time.