Meet Wolfgang Beltracchi, the World's Greatest Art Forger

The art forger mastered the styles of renowned painters to make millions.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Arguably the world's greatest art forger of all time, Wolfgang Beltracchi managed to fool collectors and leading art experts for decades. From the 1990s until they were caught in 2011, Beltracchi and his wife were essentially the Bonnie and Clyde of the art world, creating fake art and concocting elaborate stories to rake in nearly $46 million dollars. At one point, one of Beltracchi's forgeries even hung in the Met

What makes Beltacchi even more of a bad ass is the fact that he didn't simply create replicas of existing artwork. Instead, the German-born artist turned evil genius learned the techniques of artists like Max Ernst, Fernand Léger, and Kees van Dongen to create entirely original artwork, which he imagines the artists may have painted or got lost throughout the years. Check out CBS' "60 Minutes" piece on  Beltracchi to find out what lead to the man's downfall.

[via Hypebeast]

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