The Devil Wears Rothko
Inside The Art Scandal that Rocked the World
by Barry Avrich
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Pub Date Jun 10 2025 | Archive Date Jun 06 2025
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Description
The Devil Wears Rothko charts the explosive demise of Knoedler Gallery, one of New York’s oldest and most prestigious art galleries, with detailed and salacious insight into the art fraud scandal of the century.
From the moment an eccentric woman walked into the Knoedler Gallery with a Mark Rothko painting, everyone was fooled. For the next ten years, she ran an $80 million forgery ring, selling or consigning forty expertly crafted counterfeits claimed to be the works of Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and others.
Director of the acclaimed documentary Made You Look (2020) streamed on Netflix, Barry Avrich reveals new information, evidence, and inside stories about how a quixotic art dealer, master forger, and two cunning con artists managed to fool billionaire art collectors, journalists, and esteemed art appraisers. By the time the house of cards finally fell, the Knoedler Gallery and a dozen collectors had been tricked into buying over $80 million in fake art.
Could it happen again? The Devil Wears Rothko exposes the art world as a fragile system of relationships vulnerable to manipulation by the most captivating artists of our time: con artists.
Advance Praise
“The underside of the art world with a cast of characters worthy of a B-movie. A riveting true crime scandal.”
Don Thompson, author of The $12 Million Stuffed Shark and The Orange Balloon Dog
“With The Devil Wears Rothko, Barry Avrich has produced yet another terrific examination of the truly historic art crime that brought down the country’s oldest art galleries. He gets to the root of the crime and, in doing so, serves up the ultimate caveat emptor.”
Anthony Amore, best-selling author of The Art of The Con and The Rembrandt Heist
“The Devil Wears Rothko is a deep dive into a fascinating story of greed and duplicity in the art. A must-read for those interested in true crime, art forgery and the lines people will cross to get what they want.”
B.A. Shapiro, New York Times best-selling author of The Art Forger
“The Devil Wears Rothko is a breezy, gossipy tale about greed and gullibility in the world of great art, a world as shadowed by fraud as the canyons of Wall Street—and a world that documentary maestro Barry Avrich knows as well as an artist knows a favorite canvas. The vivid characters who sashay through this story lend a new dimension to the term "rogue's gallery.”
Diana B. Henriques, New York Times journalist and author of The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9798888454527 |
| PRICE | $30.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 240 |
