Geert Jan Jansen

Geert Jan Jansen (born 1943) is a Dutch art forger who was captured 1994.

Geert Jan Jansen was born in Waarle in the Netherlands. His engineer father was fond of art and Jansen became an art student. He befriended a US art dealer Michel Podulke who ran a gallery Mokum in Amsterdam and organized art shows in his gallery.

Later Jansen opened his own galleries, Jacob and Raam, but was not particularly successful. When his business went badly, he decided to sign posters of Karel Appel's lithographs and sell them as originals. Later he made his first Karel Appel forgery and sold it for 2.600.000 guilders. Thus encouraged, he sent another forgery to London; auction house sent a photograph to Appel, who stated that is was genuine. The gouache was sold with record prize.

On 1981 Dutch police was informed about a forged Bar van der Leck painting. They searched Jansen's house in Edam but found nothing. They also found 76 forged Appel lithographs on the ceiling of a local warehouse. Nobody pressed charges. Short of evidence, general attorney cut a deal with Jansen; he would not be charged if he would not make forgeries for three years.

On 1988 Jansen released the next batch of Appel paintings. When they were found to be forgeries, gallery owners begun to blame each other. In June 1988 police confiscated hundreds of Appel forgeries at the MAT gallery in Amsterdam. Owner of the gallery said that he had bought 100 Appel forgeries from the Tripple Tree Gallery, who had bought them from a dealer Henk Ernste in Paris. Ernste was later arrested but the case was settled with a 5.500.000 fine. During the furor, Jansen moved from the Netherlands to France with his mistress.

On March 1994 one Jan van der Bergen came to Karl & Faber auction house in Munich. He claimed to be an art gallerist from Orleans and presented his business card. With him he had a Chagall drawing, Asper Jorn gouache and Karel Appel painting. The first two had written certificates of authenticity. He wanted them to be auctioned soon and left in a hurry.

Sue Cubitt of the auction house had the works examined. The Chagall certificate had a misprint and expert got suspicious. Kan Nieuwenhuizen, a representative of Karel Appel, contacted the artist who said that work was his but Cubitt was still suspicious. Chagall committee in Paris verified that already deceased expert had signed the certificate but the drawing itself was a forgery. Same thing happened with the Asper Jorn certificate. Auction house decided to return all the works because it could not guarantee their authenticity. Cubitt decided to inform the Erbst Scholler of the Stuttgart Art and Antiquities squad.

When police checked other auction catalogues, they notice that Van den Bergen had offered various works of art for sale in various auction houses around Europe. When Scholler checked the Orleans gallery address, they founded that it was false – there were just a wine bottle company in that address.

The trail of false addresses and mailbox companies lead French police to a farm in La Chaux near Poitiers. Jansen – who had used the name Van den Bergen – and his associated were arrested May 6 1994.

When police investigated the farm, they found 1600 forged artworks. Forged artist included Cocteau, Dufy, Ferdinand Erfman, Charles Eyck, Leo Gestel, Bart van der Leck, Matisse, Miro and very popular target of forgery, Picasso.

French police still found little leads and even their appeal through media brought no reports of a forgery. Six years later they had to look for themselves and checked the auction records of a Drouot gallery where Jansen had traded most of his forgeries through number of different false names. They confiscated number of suspicious paintings and threatened their buyers with charges of complicity in the crime if they did not press charges against Jansen.

Jansen went to trial on September 2000 in Orleans. At that time police had found 13 forgeries. During a trial Jansen's lawyer demanded that the works were not to be destroyed in case there were real works among them. However, most of the charges were later dropped – two of the buyers disappeared – and only two remained.

Eventually Jansen was sentenced to one-year imprisonment and five additional years as a suspended sentence. He was also exiled from France for three years. All of his works were to be destroyed. Jansen planned to appeal.