Elmyr de Hory

Elmyr de Hory (actually Elemér Hoffmann , born April 14, 1906 in Budapest , † December 11, 1976 in Ibiza ) was a Hungarian painter and art forger. At the end of his “career” he boasted that he had sold several thousand counterfeits worldwide. In fact, his forgeries have now achieved fame in their own right.

biography

The most extensive information about his life story came down to us from the American author Clifford Irving , who wrote the first biography of de Hory. Irving, in turn, is best known for forging an autobiography by the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes . For this reason, but also because after his discovery as a forger , de Hory wanted to give himself a biography that was as colorful as possible, the correctness of de Hory's descriptions of his life can be questioned, at least in parts.

The time until 1945

According to de Hory's own account, he was born Elmyr Dory-Boutin. In fact, more than sixty names are attributed to de Hory. His father was an Austro-Hungarian diplomat and his mother came from a family of bankers . His parents, de Hory said, had left him in the care of changing governesses. When he was sixteen years old they got divorced. More likely, however, is de Hory's petty-bourgeois origin. De Hory claims to have moved to Budapest to begin studying there. At 18 he switched to Moritz Heymann's painting school in Munich to study classical painting there. In 1926 he would have enrolled at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris , where he claims to have completed his studies under Fernand Léger . De Hory claims to have got used to a luxurious lifestyle during this time. Occasionally he claims to have visited his home country for a short time. Eventually he became friends with a British journalist, which allegedly earned him a prison term as a political prisoner because the journalist was wanted for espionage. De Hory could have won the jailer's goodwill by portraying him. During the Second World War, de Hory was released, and a year later he was again imprisoned as a Jew and homosexual in a German concentration camp, where he was severely mistreated and finally admitted to a Berlin prison hospital [sic!]. From there he broke out and escaped to Hungary [sic!]. Back home, he should have found that his parents had been murdered and their property had been confiscated. With the little money he had left, he would have made his way to France [sic!], Where he hoped to earn his living by painting.

The period from 1946 to 1959

According to de Horys, his career as a forger began in 1946 when he sold a reproduction of a Picasso that he had painted to a British friend and that he passed off as an original. Shortly thereafter, he began to sell more Picasso forgeries to various art galleries for the equivalent of 100 to 400 US $ per picture. In the same year he established a partnership with Jacques Chamberlin , who became his art dealer. Together they toured Europe selling de Hory's fakes until de Hory noticed that Chamberlin was keeping most of the proceeds to himself, even though they had agreed to split the funds evenly. Thereupon de Hory ended the partnership and traveled on alone. In 1947 de Hory visited the United States on a three-month tourist visa. There he decided to stay and tour the country.

De Hory tried again and again to sell his own works of art instead of fakes, but he couldn't find any buyers. He expanded the range of artists he had forged to include various celebrities, including Matisse , Modigliani and Renoir . In addition, he began to sell his works only through letters; he used a number of different aliases such as Louis Cassou, Joseph Dory, Joseph Dory-Boutin, Elmyr Herzog, Elmyr Hoffman and E. Raynal .

In the 1950s, de Hory settled in Miami , from where he continued to sell his fakes by mail. In 1955 he sold one of his Matisse forgeries to the Fogg Art Museum . But there the picture was recognized as a forgery and an investigation was initiated.

That same year, Chicago- based art dealer Joseph W. Faulkner also exposed some of the pictures de Hory had sold him to be forgeries. He arranged for federal charges. De Hory then fled to Mexico City , where he was briefly arrested on the basis of flimsy suspicions of having committed the murder of a British homosexual. When the police tried to extort money from him, de Hory hired a lawyer (whom he allegedly paid with one of his forgeries) to defend himself at costly expense, and then returned to the United States.

During his recent stay, de Hory noticed that some art galleries were now selling or offering his fakes at significantly higher prices. In addition, his personal handwriting now seemed to be recognizable in the forgeries. So de Hory switched to forging lithographs , which he sold without intermediaries. But de Hory developed a mental depression which is said to have culminated in an - ultimately unsuccessful - suicide attempt with sleeping pills in Washington, DC . After his recovery, he returned to Miami.

It was there in the summer of 1958 that he met the much younger Fernand Legros , a French born in Egypt who had US citizenship through marriage. Legros, a colorful personality and, like de Hory, homosexual, became his next art dealer to earn a 40% profit margin on the sale of de Hory's paintings. De Hory toured the USA again, this time together with Legros. Together they met the young Canadian Réal Lessard , who entered into a relationship with Fernand Legros and with whom Elmyr de Hory is likely to have also fallen in love.

When Legros wanted to increase his profit margin to 50%, a dispute arose between de Hory and Legros, which was probably also fueled by the complicated love triangle between the men, and de Hory initially terminated this partnership. He tried to return to Europe in 1959. In Paris he met Legros again and told him that some of his work had stayed in New York. Legros then took possession of the pictures and sold them on his own account; his reputation as an art dealer increased enormously. A year later, Legros had built up a flourishing art trade, which was also attractive to de Hory, which is why he reconnected with him on business. Legros and Lessard are said to have provided de Hory with US $ 400 every month and sold his pictures in return for a share of the proceeds.

The time from 1959

Ursula Andress and Vicenç Caraltó , Elmyr de Ibiza art gallery in 1971

Legros built a house for de Hory, who had fled several times, in Ibiza, where de Hory lived from 1962. But gradually more and more art experts became aware of his forgeries. Interpol found Legros and Lessard. To cover up the traces, de Hory disappeared to Australia for a year; however, he returned from there in 1965. The following year Legros sold 56 paintings to a Texas oil tycoon , the President and major shareholder of the American Oil Company (AMOCO), Algur Hurtle Meadows , who refused to accept the subsequent exposure that 32 of these paintings were fakes and filed a complaint in France.

Legros was sued, whereupon Legros de Hory was thrown out of the house in Ibiza, Legros and Lassard were arrested shortly afterwards. De Hory, who had meanwhile withdrawn to mainland Spain, decided to return to Ibiza, but in August 1968 he was accepted by a Spanish court for his homosexuality (and less for the criminal activities that have now been linked to him) sentenced to two months in prison. In October 1968 he was released in Palma and left Ibiza again.

But de Hory returned a year later. He was now a celebrity. He told his story to Clifford Irving , who published it as a book, he appeared on television and stood in front of the camera for Orson Welles for his film " F is for fake ". De Hory tried again to paint, but this time he took advantage of his newfound fame and sold some works signed as Elmyr de Hory with some success. But his fame now hit him back: The French authorities wanted to obtain his extradition for his counterfeiting activities and thus banish him from "his" island.

On December 11, 1976, de Hory was found dead in his home. He had taken an overdose of sleeping pills after Spanish judges wanted to grant a French extradition request that had been rejected several times. Some of his friends suggested that the suicide was faked to prevent extradition.

After his death, de Hory's paintings rose in value and became sought-after collector's items. They are now so valuable that fake de Horys are in circulation.

literature

Clifford Irving : The Forger. The adventurous life of Elmyr de Hory , from d. American. by Helga Künzel, German Book Association (1970).
Ken Talbot: Enigma! The New Story of Elmyr de Hory the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time (1991).
Thomas Hoving : False Impressions. The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes , Simon & Schuster, New York, (1996).
Robert Hughes: Because I'm nothing if I'm not allowed to blaspheme. Critical comments on art, artists and the art market , Kindler, Munich (1993).
Mark Jones (Ed.): Fake? The Art of Deception. Exhibition catalog British Museum London , London (1990).
Mark Forgy: The Forger's Apprentice. Life with the World's Most Notorious Artist. 2012. ISBN 9781470193089 .

Movie

Dimitri Pailhe: Elmyr de Hory - The Counterfeiter of the Century , Arte, France 2015

Web links

Page with photos of Elmyr and images of his images , accessed February 2, 2014
Real Fake - The Life, Art & Crimes of Elmyr de Hory , film project of Jeff Oppenheim, accessed February 2, 2014
Elmyr de Hory at the Crime Library (English, accessed February 2, 2014)
Forgery Museum Vienna , accessed on February 2, 2014

Individual evidence

↑ Imitation instead of falsification: Elmyr's manner . FAZ , April 24, 2006, last accessed on April 18, 2013.
^ Clifford Irving , Fake: the story of Elmyr de Hory: the greatest art forger of our time , McGraw-Hill Verlag, 1969.
↑ "The Fabulous Hoax of Clifford Irving." Time , February 21, 1972 ; last accessed April 17, 2013.
↑ ^a ^b F for Fake , movie 1975, produced by François Reichenbach , 85 min., Director: Orson Welles.
↑ ^a ^b ^c Susanna Partsch , Tatort Kunst , Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2010, pp. 127–145, ISBN 978-3-406-60621-2 .
↑ Roger Peyrefitte , The Art of Action. Or the adventurous life of Fernand Legros , Zsolnay, 1977, ISBN 978-355202929-3 .
^ Réal Lessard , L'Amour du faux , Hachette, 1987, ISBN 978-201012555-3 .
^ Der Spiegel, under the heading "Judgment", Fernand Legros on July 9, 1979, last accessed on March 4, 2018.
↑ Der Spiegel , under the heading "Died", December 20, 1976, last accessed on March 4, 2018.

Remarks

↑ This is what the French filmmaker François Reichenbach claims in an interview with Orson Welles in the film F for Fake .
↑ According to research by the art historian Susanna Partsch , the facts described by Clifford Irving do not stand up to closer scrutiny. This applies particularly to de Hory's origins and his youth.
↑ Susanna Partsch sees this reference as exemplary evidence that de Hory's statements about his biography cannot be truthful in parts, because no prisoner from German concentration camps was transferred to a German hospital in the 1940s.
↑ Both Legros (in the book by Roger Peyrefitte) and Lessard accuse Clifford Irving of misrepresenting this period, which is certainly true, but their versions may not be entirely correct either. Lessard claims, among other things, that he painted the pictures with which Legros became rich, that de Hory merely forged the signatures.
↑ Susanna Partsch describes this legend as the last beautiful but fictitious story about Elmyr de Hory. He was buried in the Eivissa cemetery in Ibiza . Joseph Elementer Dory Boutin is written on his tombstone .

personal data
SURNAME	Hory, Elmyr de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Dory-Boutin, Elmyr; Hoffmann, Elemér
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Hungarian painter and art forger
DATE OF BIRTH	April 14, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH	Budapest
DATE OF DEATH	December 11, 1976
Place of death	Ibiza

[1] Imitation instead of falsification: Elmyr's manner . FAZ , April 24, 2006, last accessed on April 18, 2013.

[2] Clifford Irving , Fake: the story of Elmyr de Hory: the greatest art forger of our time , McGraw-Hill Verlag, 1969.

[3] "The Fabulous Hoax of Clifford Irving." Time , February 21, 1972 ; last accessed April 17, 2013.

[Welles-4] F for Fake , movie 1975, produced by François Reichenbach , 85 min., Director: Orson Welles.

[Partsch-6] Susanna Partsch , Tatort Kunst , Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2010, pp. 127–145, ISBN 978-3-406-60621-2 .

[Roger-9] Roger Peyrefitte , The Art of Action. Or the adventurous life of Fernand Legros , Zsolnay, 1977, ISBN 978-355202929-3 .

[Lessard-10] Réal Lessard , L'Amour du faux , Hachette, 1987, ISBN 978-201012555-3 .

[12] Der Spiegel, under the heading "Judgment", Fernand Legros on July 9, 1979, last accessed on March 4, 2018.

[13] Der Spiegel , under the heading "Died", December 20, 1976, last accessed on March 4, 2018.

[5] This is what the French filmmaker François Reichenbach claims in an interview with Orson Welles in the film F for Fake .

[7] According to research by the art historian Susanna Partsch , the facts described by Clifford Irving do not stand up to closer scrutiny. This applies particularly to de Hory's origins and his youth.

[8] Susanna Partsch sees this reference as exemplary evidence that de Hory's statements about his biography cannot be truthful in parts, because no prisoner from German concentration camps was transferred to a German hospital in the 1940s.

[11] Both Legros (in the book by Roger Peyrefitte) and Lessard accuse Clifford Irving of misrepresenting this period, which is certainly true, but their versions may not be entirely correct either. Lessard claims, among other things, that he painted the pictures with which Legros became rich, that de Hory merely forged the signatures.

[14] Susanna Partsch describes this legend as the last beautiful but fictitious story about Elmyr de Hory. He was buried in the Eivissa cemetery in Ibiza . Joseph Elementer Dory Boutin is written on his tombstone .