When Erna and Henk found out that they had bought a fake painting of Matisse in a well-respected gallery in Amsterdam, they decided they might as well start focusing on collecting fake paintings. In the former city hall of the village Fledder, Erna and Henk started a museum to exhibit fake paintings. From Picasso to Lichtenstein and from Klee to Appel, all the art movements are present in the collection.
The Dutch have a tradition in the production of fake paintings. It came out that the first fake Matisse that initiated the museum was painted by the Dutch counterfeiter Geert Jan Jansen, who was producing an incredible amount of fake paintings in a castle when he was caught by the French authorities. Another well-known Dutch counterfeiter was Hans van Meegeren.
According to the founding couple there is a large amount of fake paintings on the market. The official buyers leave the fake ones, which leave them for the fake paintings museum. The museum still misses some important works of art, like the sunflowers of Van Gogh for example. If somebody has a spare one the fake museum is very interested to buy it.
Europe correspondent Daniel Hanimann from the Swiss public TV broadcaster Schweizer Fernsehen travels to the Netherlands for the filming for a reportage about the fake art museum for the program ’10 vor 10’.
Apart from a tour through the fake art museum and interview with the founding couple, Daniel Hanimann also interviews and portrays Dutch counterfeiter Geert Jan Jansen about his criminal past and his book Magenta.
For this production Featurez proposed the idea for the story, gave advice, did the research set-up and planning and accompanied the reportage.