Brute scandal in art brut
Art investigation that turns fortunes into fakes
“Why don’t you collect Russian art?”, — I can’t say how many times I have been asked this question for my short period of studying and collecting art. There have always been two important reasons making me opt out of going into this.
First of all, it is usually way overpriced right at the beginning. Many factors contribute to this: they may become a story for a stand-alone article. And the second one is actually what this longread is all about — chances are you buy a fake are rather high. Some say that about 80% of 20th century visual art coming from Russia (or Soviet Union) is likely to have disputable provenance.
Let me digress for a moment and make a caveat here. I have no intention to say that there is something particularly wrong with Russian dealers, artists or people in general that contributed to the unfortunate image of these artworks on the market. These cases happen everywhere across the globe.
The essense of the problem lies in the closed nature of the Soviet Union. This isolationist politics let the whole country with its culture develop under cover in its own reality with almost no contacts with international [art] community.
No wonder that in the first years after the fall of the Iron Curtain myriads of artworks that were produced during that period (or simply kept closed in some private collections) invaded international market. Genuine interest for this art resulted in high demand on the market and dramatically rising prices those years. All that attracted many swindlers and resulted in thousands of fraudulent deals.
The delayed echo of that situation is heard even today.
An interesting investigation emerged today in a high reputation internet media Meduza.io. The comprehensive fact-finding article — “The elusive star of Soviet art brut” — was released recently and now promises to cause a stir on the market of art brut or naïve art.
The case is all about a mysterious self-taught artist called Foma Jaremtschuk [Фома Яремчук, rus.] who is said to be born in the beginning of 20th century, been a political prisoner and then spent many years in a mental clinic where he had painted numerous artworks in his unique powerfull and crazy manner.
Foma Jaremtschuk was born in a remote village in Siberia. He never learned to draw and finished only three grades in a rural primary school. No facts about his life until the age of twenty-nine are known. He became a victim of the Stalin-regime and after being arrested for ”slandering the USSR“ in 1936, he was sent to a labor camp. In 1947, he was found to have a mental disorder and moved from the labor camp to a closed mental hospital.
During his eleven-year stay in that hospital, Jaremtschuk made his ink and pencil drawings in which with the use of strongly expressive figures, harmonious space scenes, and dark creatures from some alien world were depicted.
After being moved to another mental institution for severely mentally ill patients, the artist died in 1986. [Information from the artist page at Delmes & Zander gallery website.]
Perfectly selling artistic legend, isn’t it?
When his works were first introduced to the market in late 2006 his unconventional manner immediately caught the eye of art market sharks. A reputable Cologne-based Galerie Susanne Zander specialising on so-called outsider art met some unknown dealer A.G. [I omit his name intentionally to avoid potantial allegations — the full story with all credentials is available in the original investigation here] who brought a set of 233 drawings on a wall-paper for review and told the above-mentioned story.
Those drawings with almost infernal scenes of an nut-case mind with all those futuristic and imposible details for the period they were said to be drawn (1960') looked really promising and made this German gallery believe that was a real deal. They immediately bought the whole set for €45,000. And the gallery didn’t regret — the next Cologne Art Fair proved that genius of a poor soviet psycho Foma Jaremstchuk was destined to become a success. Well, and a nice profit to the gallery and, of course, this unknown A.G.
Fortified by initial demand this shady dealer brought more and more drawings to the market. Another well-known London gallerist Henry Boxer showed Foma’s artworks at famous Outsider Art Fair in New York and was later able to sell them for £4,000–6,000 per single piece.
Everything looked like a fairy tale for this unknown genius undeservingly hidden in obscurity for so many years.
Dedicated articles by well-known authors were praising his talent [check it out here and here], Colin Rhodes, an international authority in this type of art, even wrote a special 200-page book — ‘Foma Jaremstchuk: An Art Brut Master Revealed’ in 2017.
The only thing that was looking…hmmm, suspicious? Noone ever heard about Foma in Russia.
The investigation leaders and authors of the original article Yulia Vishnevetskaya and Misha Yashnov [Юлия Вишневецкая, Миша Яшнов, rus.] first saw images of Foma artworks at the Delmes & Zander gallery’s website and were also impressed yet more puzzled by the suggested provenance.
Everything sounds at least controversial to an expert with a Russian background. Starting with these really unbelievable subjects for the mid 20th century Soviet reality (that actually looked quite typical for post-soviet trash art of 1990') ending up with the artist name itself. “Foma Jaremtschuk” looks like a direct reference to Foma & Yaryoma/Jarema [Фома и Ярёма, rus.] — two famous dodgy fictional characters of Russian folklore. Moreover, all the subjects looked like they were skillfully drawn to look like a crazy fantasy of a mentally-ill person, in other words, in the way a so-called healthy mind would think of it.
These doubts and assumptions provoked a thorough investigation by two journalists that finally shed the light to the whole “production scheme”. The story is rather complex and well-elaborated unveiling the personalities of its main actors and citing the direct and indirect evidence of many witnesses. No doubt it may soon be escalated in the international media sources.
A thought-provoking point for me is, again, artwork provenance which in this case was actually based on a word-of-mouth legend taken with no grain of salt.
There is no evidence if this person — Foma Jaremtschuk — has actually ever lived, being medically treated or prosecuted with Soviet authorities. Not a single document.
Well, the wall-paper most of the drawings were created on was actually the one that was produced in USSR in 1950'-1960'. Does it seem like enough to date the artworks properly? Not really, especially, when the investigation found the real author and he said that in 1990’s and later he used to paint these sketches on a old wall-paper left from his grand-parents ’cause “it was an interesting support [material] and it was free”.
Well, moral of this intriguing story (one of these numerous cases happening every year in the art world) is simple, yet so powerful: always do your homework. If you buy a piece of art not simply because you like it and don’t care about the rest, but want to make sure you actually get what you paying for then do at least some simple fact check.
Feel free to use this short guide of my own on how not to waste money when buying an old master. And if you are keen on modern or contemporary era — make sure to rely even more on proven facts and documents.
Sounds like a challenge? Well, the hunt for real art treasures is truly it.
