New character in fake-art probe
As the FBI investigates whether dozens of big-name paintings supplied by Long Island dealer Glafira Rosales to other galleries are fakes, details have begun to trickle out about Rosales’ longtime companion Jose Carlos Bergantiños Diaz’s involvement in a lawsuit over a counterfeit Basquiat painting.
Since last year, Rosales has been under scrutiny for selling purported paintings by Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and other modernist works that a number of art experts have called forgeries.
According to a New York Times report, pigments found in some of the paintings had not yet been created at the time the artworks had supposedly been created.
Since the scandal broke, New York’s oldest art gallery, Knoedler & Company, which had sold a number of the paintings in question — one for $17 million — has closed and been named in two multimillion-dollar lawsuits. (Knoedler has reportedly claimed that its closing was a business decision and not related to its legal troubles.)
The investigation has set New York’s art world reeling and insiders have since begun whispering about the history of Rosales’ longtime partner Diaz, with whom she has a daughter. (The couple have been identified in media reports as husband and wife, but their attorney Anastasios Sarikas said they are not technically married.)
Diaz’s name appears in two lawsuits involving Christie’s auction house.
The most recent was a 2007 lawsuit that art dealer Tony Shafrazi and collector Guido Orsi brought against Christie’s in Manhattan Supreme Court.
The two men claimed that the auction house had knowingly sold the Basquiat painting despite being warned in advance that its authenticity was in question.
In papers we obtained from the court’s record room, Justice Shirley Kornreich notes in her decision dismissing the case, that “Christie’s entered into consignment with Carlos Diaz” for the untitled 1982 Basquiat painting that was the focus of Shafrazi and Orsi’s lawsuit. (Diaz was not a defendant in the case.)
In 1996 Diaz was involved in another Christie’s lawsuit. That time, the auction house sued him after he bid $96,000 for a 19th century painting by Eduardo Leon Garrido, then failed to pay for it.
In his defense, Diaz claimed that he was acting as a representative for his brother Jesus Bergantinos Diaz, who lived in Spain. As a result Jose claimed he should not be responsible for footing the bill.
Diaz’s attorney Sarikas told us his client was “in fact acting as an agent for his brother Jesus Bergantinos,” but, he added, Jose did end up making good. “He paid more than $100,000,” Sarikas said. “He’s not a deadbeat.”
Sarikas also insisted that Diaz “has never sold a single solitary painting that is in controversy. Not one. To anyone.”
The attorney, who also represents Rosales, 55, defended her as well: "She has never knowingly sold any piece that she did not believe was real," Sarikas said.