Emmy and Grammy Award-winning actor/comedian and avid art collector, Steve Martin has been had, and bad. Martin, 65, purchased a piece of modern art entitled Landscape with Horses he believed to have been created by Dutch painter Heinrich Campendonk back in 2004 for an astounding $850,000 from a notable Paris gallery, and it turns out the piece was actually made by an expert group of forgers hailing from Germany. The star held onto the painting for two years before selling it for a loss, some 200,000 euros less than what he paid, but according to him, he had no clue it was a fake during the entirety of his owning it. Only in 2010 when the art forging ring was busted by German police, a bust that revealed sales of dozens of forgeries ranging in price in the millions, did the truth come out. Mr. Martin recently told the New York Times, “The fakers were quite clever. Of course, they’re all in jail now”. Appropriately funny, but the situation is no joke, an expert appraiser even authenticated the signature that was tagged on the back of the piece!
