Convicted art forger Beltracchi seeks return of his fake painting at top court

The claim before the court

Wolfgang Beltracchi, a painter convicted over one of the largest art-market frauds in Germany, wants a painting he forged returned to him. The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe began hearing his claim on Friday, 9 October. The work is 'Rotes Bild mit Pferden' (Red Picture with Horses), which Beltracchi painted in the style of the German expressionist Heinrich Campendonk. In 2006 the Lempertz auction house in Cologne sold it to the Maltese company Trasteco for 2.88 million euros, presented as a genuine work from 1914. The case is heard by the fifth civil senate under the reference V ZR 242/24, and a decision is due on 15 January.

How the forgery came out

The fraud surfaced in 2010, when examinations of the painting detected titanium white, a pigment not used in painting in 1914. The buyer demanded its money back, and after litigation and a settlement the picture returned to the auction house, which later sold it on as a work by Beltracchi. Beltracchi was sentenced in 2011 by the Cologne regional court to six years in prison, while his wife Helene received four years for her part in the scheme. He was released on parole in 2015 and has since painted under his own name. In a 2021 interview with dpa he said he had made about 300 forgeries by more than a hundred painters, and that some of them are still in museums.

The ownership question

Beltracchi's position is that ownership should have passed back to him when the original sale was unwound, which would have meant the auction house had no right to resell the painting. The courts in Freiburg and at the Karlsruhe higher regional court (OLG) have already rejected that argument. Presiding judge Bettina Brückner explained at the hearing that he can only win if he can show he legally acquired ownership of the work. She set out the sequence for the court: Beltracchi first authorized the auction house to transfer ownership to a buyer, the Maltese company became owner, and then decided to transfer ownership to the auction house. The key question, as Brückner framed it, is at which exact moment Beltracchi would have become owner again.

Arguments in the courtroom

Beltracchi's lawyer argued that a legal gap exists. His client, he said, never agreed to the auction house becoming owner, so the house gained something it had not held before the first sale. Counsel for the new buyer answered that after the 'erhebliche Täuschung' (considerable deception) the auction house and the forger had broken with each other, and that the house no longer wanted to act on the forger's behalf. She also argued that no law regulates the situation directly, which leaves the court to decide how title passed.

What happens next

The BGH has set 15 January as the date for its ruling. According to the preliminary assessment reported from the hearing, the senate could strengthen the view of the Karlsruhe appeals court, which would leave Beltracchi without the painting. Until a ruling, the question of who holds title to the work remains open.