A painting long hailed as a Moïse Kisling masterwork, held in the collection of a Japanese company, has been linked to notorious art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi—the latest in a wave of such discoveries shaking Japan’s fine art scene.
For years, a painting believed to be Kiki de Montparnasse by Polish French painter Moïse Kisling has been prominently displayed in the gallery of Okayama Prefecture’s Yamada Bee Company Group. Japan-based news outlet NHK, however, reported that the company’s art curator Kurose Kaori was contacted earlier this year by a museum in Fukuyama, which shared concerns about the painting’s authenticity.
“I was shocked,” Kurose told NHK. “The almond-shaped eyes and melancholic expression were classic Kisling. It’s one of our most beautiful pieces.”
The work had been tied to the prolific art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi, who in 2011 was found guilty by a German court of forgery and corruption. The court found that 14 forgeries made by Beltracchi had been sold to collectors worldwide for a total of $45 million. Beltracchi has since claimed to have forged some 300 works by modern masters including Max Ernst, Max Pechstein, André Derain and Fernand Léger. He was released from prison in 2015 and now paints under his own signature.
The Kisling case joins a growing list of high-profile art forgeries in Japan. NHK reported that another suspected forgery, a portrait purported to have been painted by Marie Laurencin, was discovered in a Tokyo gallery collection. The legitimate work, titled Alfred Flechtheim, was painted by Laurencin around 1912–13 and purchased 36 years ago from a French gallery for roughly 30 million yen ($217,000). Questions were first raised about the so-called Alfred Flechtheim painting in Tokyo in 2011.
Two forgeries, suspected by authorities to have been painted by Beltracchi, were uncovered in July 2024 in museums in Tokyo’s Tokushima and Kochi prefectures. The Mainichi, a major Japanese daily newspaper, confirmed that one of the works is a forgery of Girl with Swan by the German painter and graphic artist Heinrich Campendonk. The painting was purchased in 1996 by the Museum of Art, Kochi, from an art dealer in Nagoya for 18 million yen (approximately $167,000 at the time). Girl with Swan was frequently on display at the museum and loaned to other cultural venues. The Tokushima Modern Art Museum simultaneously announced that it would withdraw one work in its collection from an upcoming exhibition following suspicions that it was a Beltracchi fake.
Yamada Bee was confident in the authenticity of Kiki de Montparnasse at the time of its purchase in 2013 from a museum in Hachioji, Tokyo; the work came with a handwritten appraisal allegedly from Kisling’s own son. Furthermore, records indicate that a painting bearing that title was sold at Christie’s in 1995, where it was valued at nearly $300,000. A label on the back of the canvas, however, referenced art dealer Alfred Flechtheim, a real person known to appear in Beltracchi’s fabricated provenances.
In an interview with NHK, Beltracchi admitted to forging Kiki de Montparnasse around 1990.
“I studied Kisling deeply,” he said. “This is still a Kisling painting. It was highly valued then, and now collectors seek my works.”
Kurose, the curator at Yamada Bee, was distressed over the news, saying, “He may see it as art, but I cannot accept it. Thinking of the feelings and efforts of Kisling and other artists whose works were forged, I simply feel sad. It is just unacceptable.”
