Opening reception at the Hillstrom Museum of ArtFebruary 15, 2010 at 7–9 p.m.
An opening reception will be held for its new concurrent exhibitions, which are Elmyr de Hory, Artist and Faker, and FOCUS IN/ON: Henry Schnakenberg's Dominoes. The reception is free and open to the public, as are the exhibitions, which will be on view from Feb. 15 through Apr. 18, 2010.
Elmyr de Hory, Artist and Faker features works by one of the most notorious art fakers of modern times, Elmyr de Hory (1906-1976), who is believed to have created hundreds of fakes of modern masters such as Henri Matisse (1869-1954) or Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) that were accepted into museums and prominent collections in the U.S. and abroad. Mark Forgy, who formed a close friendship with de Hory in the final years of his life, will lend works that the artist gave or bequeathed to him. Some of these were done in the style of other artists but signed with de Hory's own name, while others were in the artist's own style.
Forgy is collaborating with filmmaker Jeff Oppenheim to create a documentary, to be released in 2011 and titled Chasing Elmyr, on de Hory, who has been the subject of earlier significant biographies that include a 1969 study titled Fake! The Story of Elmyr de Hory, the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time, written by Clifford Irving (just before his own forgery, the spurious biography of Howard Hughes). Film studies on de Hory include Orson Welles' F for Fake (1972), a BBC documentary titled Elmyr, the True Picture? (1970), and a recent film by Norwegian Knut Jorfald titled Masterpiece or Forgery? The Story of Elmyr de Hory (1997).
In addition to around seventy paintings, drawings and prints by de Hory from Forgy's collection, the exhibition will also include a large portrait of de Hory and his brother Stephen as young children, painted by Hungarian Philip de L??szl?? (1869-1937), the highly popular portraitist whose other clients included Pope Leo XIII and many European royals and aristocrats. Also on view will be genuine works by two of the artists de Hory frequently forged (Matisse and Modigliani), lent by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, plus a fake Matisse from the collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum, to which it was donated for study purposes as a recognized de Hory forgery. The exhibition is supported with a generous grant from the Carl and Verna Schmidt Foundation.
Related programming presented in conjunction with Elmyr de Hory, Artist and Faker includes two public lectures. The first is by prominent art critic and writer Jonathan Lopez, author of the 2008 bestseller The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren (3:30 p.m., Feb. 28, Wallenberg Auditorium, Nobel Hall of Science). Lopez will discuss van Meegeren (1889-1947), who ranks with de Hory as one of the most recognized art forgers and who is known for his fakes after the Dutch seventeenth-century painter Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). A second public lecture will be given by Mark Forgy, considering his relationship with de Hory and the aesthetic implications of faked works of art (3:30 p.m., Mar. 21, Wallenberg Auditorium, Nobel Hall of Science).
Concurrent with Elmyr de Hory, Artist and Faker, the Hillstrom Museum of Art will present another of its FOCUS IN/ON programs. A 1956 oil painting titled Dominoes, by American artist Henry Schnakenberg (1892-1970), will be the subject of the latest of the FOCUS IN/ON projects, in which a single work from the Hillstrom Collection is analyzed in depth in collaboration with a colleague from across the curriculum. The painting by Schnakenberg, a realist associated with the Art Students League in New York, will be exhibited with an essay co-written with Carolyn Pillers Dobler, Professor and Chair, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, which will consider Schnakenberg and his career, and the elements of pattern and chance that can be discerned in the painting.
Additional information on the Hillstrom Museum of Art can be found at the website at www.gustavus.edu/finearts/hillst