Christian Goller (painter)

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Christian Goller (born January 18, 1943 ; † November 13, 2017 ) was a painter from Untergriesbach . He gained notoriety above all through the allegations of art forgery that have been raised against him several times since the 1970s. In the most extensive police investigation to date in autumn 2014, he was charged with forging at least 40 old master paintings.

Life

Goller was a trained gravure retoucher and attended restoration courses at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart . He imitated icons at a young age, later he turned to the appearance of old German masters. He has worked as a church painter on various occasions and has restored altars and painted churches.

Goller first came under suspicion of art forgery when the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio acquired an alleged work by Matthias Grünewald for around one million US dollars in 1974 for a painting depicting St. Catherine , which after the appearance of another alleged Grünewald The panel proved to be painted by Goller in 1972. Since Goller could not prove any intent in bringing the works into circulation, the investigation was discontinued. As part of the reporting at the time, Goller confessed to other old masters imitations. Hubertus Falkner von Sonnenburg, former general director of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen , who examined fake panel paintings in the style of the Dürer period at the Doerner Institut in the 1970s , of which a pair of lovers with the view of Wasserburg later turned out to be a forgery by Goller, was instrumental in the unmasking involved in the Grünewald forgeries in Cleveland and certified Goller as having greater talent than Lothar Malskat .

As part of his work as a church painter, Goller copied various paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder . So far, no copy is known that has been marked as such. A version of the Madonna under the apple tree (original in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg) was sold as a Goller copy at auction house Reibnitz on November 7, 2014 for 900 euros. A copy of the miraculous image of Mariahilf (original in Innsbruck Cathedral ) by Goller from 2011 is in the Edelhamer Chapel at the Obermeier-Hof in Feichten an der Alz . But his reputation as an art forger stuck to Goller for decades and he also flirted with it himself. He was seen twice in 2002 on the Capriccio broadcast by Bayerischer Rundfunk, where he gave information about what constitutes a legal copy and from when to speak of a forgery. In an interview with the Abendzeitung in January 2004, in which the then 60-year-old advertised copies made to order, he even saw himself “in a row with Konrad Kujau ”. In recent years he has given the parish in his hometown Untergriesbach, where Goller worked several times on an official basis, several alleged old master paintings, whereby there were doubts about the age of the paintings and the question arose whether the painter had not painted the pictures himself .

The now 71-year-old Goller came again into the focus of investigators in autumn 2014, after a large number of stylistically matching alleged old master paintings, allegedly from the workshop or the immediate successor of Cranach the Elder. Ä. , appeared on the international art market, whose authenticity was doubted by art historians due to their style, their imitated craquelure or with regard to fictitious provenance from the area around Goller's hometown Untergriesbach and which could be clearly assigned to the Untergriesbach painter because of their similarities with confirmed works by Goller. The public prosecutor's office in Passau has since been investigating Goller and three other suspects on suspicion of commercial fraud and has put the damage at around 500,000 euros. Far greater than the material damage is the ideal. LKA President Peter Dathe describes the case as "outstanding" and as an "intervention in German art history". Despite ongoing investigations, art scholars consider the process to be the "greatest forger scandal of the last 100 years". As an immediate reaction to the investigation, the Christie’s auction house withdrew a portrait of Emperor Charles V intended for auction at the end of November 2014, which was supposed to be proclaimed an old master's painting for 35,000 euros, but is now considered a suspected Goller forgery.

After around a year of investigations, the Passau Public Prosecutor Ursula Raab-Gaudin announced in November 2015 that an indictment would be brought in spring 2016.

In the spring of 2016, a civil lawsuit began against Goller, in which a Munich collector sued for the reversal of the purchase of two pictures that he had acquired as alleged pictures from Cranach or from the Cranach School, which, however, also more likely came from the hand of a copyist . The art historian Claus Grimm was called in as an expert for the process .

At the beginning of March 2016, an alleged Cranach painting in Aix-en-Provence, which has been in the possession of the Prince of Liechtenstein since 2013, was confiscated by the French police. Goller was also associated with this painting, a representation of a Venus dated 1531. The painting shows features that match other Goller's forgeries, including a fake craquelure and painted areas of shadow.

Suspected fakes

In connection with the investigation in autumn 2014, various paintings were published that could be Goller's forgeries:

  • Portrait of a laughing young woman , allegedly from the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder. Ä.
  • Charles V , allegedly from the circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder. J., offered by Christie's in November 2014 , then withdrawn before the auction
  • Justitia , allegedly from the circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder. Ä., Sold at Christie's for £ 103,250 in 2008
  • Head of a boy , allegedly from the school of Lucas Cranach the Elder. Ä.
  • Judith , allegedly from the workshop or the successor to Lucas Cranach the Elder. Ä.
  • Philipp Melanchthon , inscribed with the Cranach snake signet
  • Head of a young woman , brought up for auction at Nagel in Stuttgart in 2010
  • Venus with Cupid

According to various sources, Goller is said to have forged at least 40, possibly more than 50 such old master paintings. Experts estimate that Goller could even have launched several hundred alleged old master paintings on the art market in the last few decades. In addition to Cranach, Goller could also have forged works by Albrecht Dürer .

In March 2016, Goller was considered the author of another painting:

  • Venus , collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein

swell

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Passauer Neue Presse - Obituaries: Obituary from Christian Goller. Retrieved February 10, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Der Spiegel, 22/1978
  3. ^ Hubertus Falkner von Sonnenburg: Painting forgeries . In: Weltkunst from October 21, 1977
  4. ↑ Heidi Dürr: Counterfeiters fill market gaps , in: DIE ZEIT 20/1978
  5. ^ Thomas Hoving: False Impressions , New York 1997, pp. 246–248.
  6. ↑ http://www.kunst-faelschung.de/Geschichten/meister.html
  7. ↑ Cranach the Youngest , in: Süddeutsche Zeitung of November 20, 2014
  8. ↑ Excerpts from the broadcasts at br.de: Investigations against church painters: Untergriesbacher suspected of being counterfeiters ( Memento from November 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ^ AZ of January 10, 2004
  10. ↑ Untergriesbach parish church: Are the pictures really old or by Goller? ( Memento from December 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), Bayerischer Rundfunk, November 18, 2014.
  11. ↑ Press release LKA Bayern, November 2014
  12. ↑ Die Welt, November 18, 2014
  13. ↑ Handelsblatt November 20, 2014
  14. ↑ http://www.rnz.de/kultur-tipps/kultur-regional_artikel,-Die-falschen-Cranach-Bilder-aus-Untergriesbach-_arid,142801.html
  15. ^ Goller Trial: Reviewer considers "Cranach" painting to be a copy in Passauer Neue Presse on February 11, 2016.
  16. ↑ Confiscated Cranach painting: “Won't let us offer that” , in: Tiroler Tageszeitung. Online edition from March 25, 2016
  17. ↑ A false Venus from Lower Bavaria? , in: Mittelbayrische Zeitung, April 1, 2016
  18. ↑ Olga Kronsteiner: Painting by Lucas Cranach: Much Ado about a Venus . In: Der Standard, March 19, 2016.
  19. ↑ a b c d e Illustration in Ulrike Knöfel: Tatort Untergriesbach . In: Der Spiegel . No. 47 , 2014, p. 126 ( online ).
  20. ↑ http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/circle-of-lucas-cranach-ii-portrait-of-5847823-details.aspx
  21. ↑ Handelsblatt, November 20, 2014
  22. ↑ http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?from=searchresults&intObjectID=5159327&sid=8f4283ab-1b9c-4aa7-b206-dc4a8eaf35dc
  23. ↑ Fig. In Süddeutsche Zeitung from November 18, 2014
  24. ↑ Fig. In Handelsblatt from November 20, 2014
  25. ↑ Fig. In Bild-Zeitung, Munich edition, November 18, 2014
  26. ↑ Cranach the Youngest , in: Süddeutsche Zeitung of November 20, 2014
  27. ↑ Did Goller forge Dürer too? ( Memento from January 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), report by Bayerischer Rundfunk, regional news from Lower Bavaria, December 3, 2014
  28. ↑ Painting by Lucas Cranach: Much Ado about Venus. In: derStandard.at. March 19, 2016, accessed December 18, 2017 .
  29. ↑ blog.arthistoricum.net
personal data
SURNAME Goller, Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1943
DATE OF DEATH November 13, 2017