E4 BETRAYED Art fraud victims describe personal, financial toll
Dealer’s friendship and business savvy kept many in dark
by Helen O’Neill
new york — In an uptown bis- tro, not far from the studio where as a child he watched his father paint bold abstract masterpieces, Earl Davis contemplates the great- est loss of his life. Not his beloved father, Stuart
Davis, who died in 1964 when Earl was 12. Nor his father’s work, which Davis, an only child, spent three decades trying to document and showcase. Even the loss of the millions of dollars that the paint- ings were worth — Davis’s inheri- tance, swindled from him in the cruelest fashion — is not what hurts the most. The biggest loss, Davis says, was the love and friendship of the man he trusted with everything — his confidences, his dreams, his fa- ther’s life’s work. Even now, several years after
the unraveling of one of the most elaborate art frauds in history, Da- vis has nightmares about con- fronting Lawrence Salander. Why did the art dealer spend decades cultivating his friendship even as he sold more than 90 of the fa- ther’s paintings behind Davis’s back, dismantling a collection that Davis had sought to preserve? What of those endless, richly satis- fying conversations about art and philosophy and life? Was any of it real? The same anguished questions
BEBETO MATTHEWS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
UNEASY: Brooklyn artist John Crawford, son of Ralston Crawford, retrieved his father’s paintings from Lawrence Salander’s gallery. the art world.
have tortured dozens of other vic- tims — from celebrities to wealthy collectors to artists and those managing their estates — defraud- ed of $120 million by the man some call the Bernard L. Madoff of
Earlier this year, Salander pleaded guilty to 29 counts of grand larceny and fraud. In Au- gust, he was sentenced to six to 18 years in prison. In court docu-
ments and testimony, the 61-year- old Salander outlined his schemes: How he would sell art he didn’t own, sometimes peddling the same painting or shares in a painting to two or more buyers.
How he falsified records, lied to in- vestors, submitted fraudulent loan applications, sold paintings that were for exhibit only, and pocketed the money to pay for pri- vate jets, his multimillion-dollar Manhattan townhouse, his 66- acre Upstate estate. Was it all a great con from the
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start? Or did Salander, as some suggest, cross to “the dark side” of the art world, taking advantage of a strangely unregulated place where priceless works are often consigned to galleries with little more than a handshake? Ellyn Shander, a psychiatrist who lost her late father’s art col- lection, calls Salander “a sly, ma- nipulative sociopath, a con man with no soul.” But others describe Salander as a misunderstood vi- sionary who was passionate about great art, who ultimately felt be- trayed himself by the backers who once believed in him. “Was he a cheat? Yes. Was he ruthless? Yes,” says artist Paul Re- sika, who exhibited with Salander for 19 years and lost much of his work. “But he did tremendous things for art.”
‘Part of our life’
Shander’s eyes glow as she sits in her Stamford, Conn., home and describes growing up in a house filled with art. The tiny figurative piece by Modigliani. The vivid Mo- net seascape. Small Picassos and Cézannes. “They were part of our life,” Shander says. At the gallery, Shander remembers a genial man who embraced her father, physi- cian and collector Alexander Pearlman, as they strolled through rooms filled with paintings — American modernists such as Marsden Hartley and Albert Pink- ham Ryder as well as works by Ma- tisse, Rembrandt and El Greco. Her father, Shander says, loved Sa- lander like a son. After Pearlman died in 2004 at 91, Shander and her sisters felt re- lieved when Salander drove to Pearlman’s home and loaded the collection into a van “for safekeep- ing.” It was the last they saw of their father’s art. “He walked in all concerned
and crying for my dad, and he walked out with a $2 million-plus art collection that he stole. What kind of human being does that?” Shander says.
And, she adds bitterly, what kind of a world lets him get away with it? In fact, the art world, with its clubby nature and casual intimacy between dealers, collectors, galler- ies and artists, is particularly vul- nerable to fraud. “It’s a world of re- lationships, friendships, hand- shakes,” says longtime Manhattan gallery owner Joan Washburn.
It’s also a world of fabulous wealth, enormous egos and cre- ative pride. Artists, eager to have their work exhibited, hand over paintings with few safeguards. Pa- per trails can be murky. Title is not always clear. And the agreements signed when a work is handed to a gallery for sale or exhibit offer lit- tle protection if the gallery owner is dishonest or goes bankrupt. Salander became a towering presence in this world, rising from relatively modest beginnings managing his father’s small gal- lery in Manhattan and another in Wilton, Conn. Salander’s charm and his prodigious knowledge of art were irresistible to many. Ten- nis star John McEnroe, a serious art collector, apprenticed with Sa- lander in 1993. Abstract expres- sionist painter Robert De Niro Sr., father of the actor, became Salan- der’s friend and exhibited at the gallery. Hedge fund executive Roy Lennox invested millions in deals with the gallery. “It was such a beautiful loca- tion, and Larry was very person- able, and we were really looking to showcase the art and give Suzy and George a bigger market pres- ence,” says Kinney Frelinghuysen, nephew of abstract artist Suzy Fre- linghuysen and her husband, art- ist George Morris. Even gallery staff felt anointed by Salander. Paula Hornbostel, hired as a researcher in 1996, spent a thrilling 11 years at her dream job. Salander nicknamed her “Supe” — short for “superwo- man” — because of her ability to verify the work of obscure paint- ers. In 2000, Salander flew her to Boston and introduced her to the Lachaise Foundation, whose di- rectors were so impressed that they named her curator. “It was just all so exciting and I was learning so much,” Hornbos- tel says, recounting expeditions to Budapest and Prague and parties at Salander’s country estate. Privately, many questioned how Salander was paying for every- thing. In 2005, when Salander moved the gallery to a 25,000- square-foot mansion on East 71st Street, other gallery owners won- dered if he was stretched. Salander made no secret of his disdain for the astronomical sums paid for pieces by contemporary stars such as Jeff Koons and Da- mien Hirst. He talked grandly about bringing “soul” back to art, about acquiring the greatest col- lection of Old Masters and Renais- sance paintings. The art world was skeptical. Old Masters don’t come on the market often and their authenticity can be hard to trace. “It was just a mystery to the rest of us, how he could afford it all,” Washburn says. Then, almost overnight, the mystery was revealed.
Asking questions For Davis, the first hint of trou- ble came in 2005 when he began asking basic accounting questions about hundreds of paintings stored with Salander. He was shocked to learn that several pieces had been sold without his permission. Salander stalled, promising that Davis would be paid, offering vague answers about the whereabouts of other works. Davis was worried. Trade maga- zines were reporting on legal com- plaints by collectors and others saying they hadn’t been paid. Fi- nally, when Davis demanded a re- turn of all the work, Salander pro- duced a favorite piece from his fa- ther’s Ashcan period. Davis felt so relieved, he stopped asking ques- tions, at least for a time. Davis says he eventually discov- ered that Salander had simply borrowed back the piece tempo- rarily to falsely reassure his friend. In fact, it had been sold. Later, doz- ens of similar tales would unfold, many detailed in a blizzard of law- suits. “The level of deception was just staggering,” Davis says. “And the level of control.” By 2007, law- suits were mounting and things were spiraling out of control. Salander dismissed his prob- lems as “cash flow” issues, saying everything would be resolved af- ter the opening of one of the most ambitious exhibitions of Old Mas- ter paintings ever. Anchoring the show: a rare Caravaggio on loan from a London dealer. Salander
betrayal continued on E5 TCircleMirror
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