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The Forger and the Conman
For more than a decade two Englishmen conned a gullible art market with fakes and forgeries. Art teacher John Myatt produced over two hundred fake paintings by leading 20th-century artists. He used household paint and petroleum jelly. He could hardly believe he was getting away with it. John Drewe forged the provenance of the paintings to make Myatt’s fakes seem genuine. To do that he altered and corrupted the archives of some of the most prestigious galleries and museums in London. Drewe literally changed art history.

Myatt’s fakes sold across the world. Only 73 of them have ever been identified. The rest are still out there. The scam was eventually exposed by a disgruntled partner and an American art expert living in Paris. Drewe was sentenced to six years in prison for his part in the fraud that shook the art world. Myatt went to prison for a year but now has a lucrative and legitimate career as a painter of “genuine fakes”.

This film traces the rise and fall of the forger and the conman and shows how, for years, they were able to fool some of the best art experts in the world.