BERLIN — German police said Thursday that they have broken up a multimillion-euro international forgery ring that specialized in producing bogus works attributed to Russian avant-garde artists including Vasily Kandinsky.
Two suspects were arrested at their homes in the western German city of Wiesbaden as alleged leaders of a group of six forgery artists, while searches of businesses, homes and art galleries were carried out Wednesday and Thursday in at least six German cities as well as in Israel and Switzerland, federal police said in a statement.
Since 2005, the ring is believed to have produced and sold more than 400 faked paintings as "previously unknown works" attributed to artists such as Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov for "four- to seven-figure euro sums" each, they said.
(AP)
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