Vintage oil paint painting by Geert Jan Jansen

Geert Jan Jansen (Waalre, 1943) is a Dutch painter and art forger who was arrested in France in 1994 and convicted in 2000 for the latter. Jansen’s father, a technician at Philips, was an art lover and Jansen went on to study art history. During his studies he befriended the American art dealer Michel Podulke, who owned the Mokum gallery in Amsterdam, and Jansen started organizing exhibitions there. He later opened his own galleries Jacob and Raam, but had little success. When his company started to lose money, he started signing posters of lithographs by Karel Appel to sell them as originals. He later made his first forgery of an Karel Appel, and sold it quite easily. Encouraged by this, he sent another forgery to auction in London. The auction house sent a photo of it to Appel, who then declared it genuine, and the gouache sold for a record price. Jansen had offered similar works for sale to auction houses throughout Europe. In the end it turned out that there was not a gallery but a wine bottling plant at the address he had given in Orléans. A trail of false addresses led French police to a farm in the hamlet of La Chaux, south of Poitiers. On May 6, 1994, Jansen and his girlfriend were arrested there and he received a prison sentence of 5 years plus 3 years exile from France, later another 5 years because the police found more and more material by his hand. Even nowadays sometimes forger work of him are found. After his conviction, Jansen has had several exhibitions, in the Netherlands and abroad. Because the strange thing about counterfeiters is that they can paint terribly well. The paintings are now signed with his own name. It is often indicated that he paints in the style of Appel, Matisse, Picasso or others, in which he goes along with the times on artist names that are popular in the media. For example, he occasionally indicates at exhibitions that he paints in the style of Banksy. Jansen’s mindset remains a strange mindset, but his craftsmanship is definitely there. This work is from the post-conviction period and was made in the Netherlands and fully made under his own name. Special work with a story that is dark but fascinating and at the same time shows craftsmanship. Reference : 262194