The FBI has seized 25 works attributed to Jean-Michel Basquiat and exhibited in Florida, their authenticity appearing doubtful, we learned on Saturday from the Orlando Museum of Art.
The museum, which exhibited them, obeyed a request from the FBI on Friday to have access to the exhibition Heroes and Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the works are now in the hands of the American federal police, museum spokeswoman Emilia Bourmas-Fry told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“It is important to note that we were not made to understand that the museum was under investigation,” she said.
The exhibit was scheduled to close on June 30, and the spokeswoman added that the museum would continue to cooperate with the FBI. The federal police did not immediately respond to requests for comment from AFP.
The works concerned, painted on recovered packaging, were very little known until the opening of the exhibition in February, according to the New York Times, which revealed the FBI operation on Friday.
According to the American daily, one of the works was painted on the back of a package on which was written “Align the top of the FedEx label here”. But the inscription typeface was not used by the rapid transit group until 1994, six years after the artist’s death, added the Times, quoting a former FedEx employee.
The FBI seized the works on the basis of a 41-page sworn statement stating “false information related to the alleged previous owner of the works”, according to the newspaper.
The investigation also showed “attempts to sell the works using false documents on their provenance, and bank statements showing possible calls to invest in art that is not authentic”.
The owners of the works — an art dealer and a retiree — and museum director Aaron De Groft say Basquiat painted them in 1982, and sold them for $5,000 to a TV screenwriter today. deceased, Thad Mumford.
According to them, Mr. Mumford kept them in a storage room and forgot about them for 30 years.
But in the FBI document, an agent specializing in trafficking in works of art, Elizabeth Rivas, specifies that she met Mr. Mumford in 2014 and learned that he “had never bought any works by Basquiat and that he had no knowledge of the presence of works by Basquiat in his storage room”.
If they were authenticated, the 25 works of Jean-Michel Basquiat could be worth up to 100 million dollars.