Fake Picasso paintings that are found in Turkey have a long history. The first Picasso painting, alleged to be “La Fermière”, was seized in a operation on June 5th 2000 by Ä°zmir Law Enforcements. Since then there are 36 Picassos have been caught in total by 34 operations held in 21 different cities in Turkey. The last operation was carried out in Malatya province on November 15th, 2018 and became an inspiration to this web-based project. This project aims to be a source for the very phenomenon of “Turkish Picassos” by gathering and presenting all the related press clippings, articles and images together.
The name of the project is directly taken from Martin Bailey’s article “The Turkish Picassos”, published in The Art Newspaper, June 2001. The content of the website is comprised of three sections. The News Archive section contains a list of all the news and articles related to these paintings. The original news and articles are accessible by linked codes (e.g. PICMIL20000607) in the identifier category of the list. There are some cases where more than one news source is being used due to the involvement of varied information and images. Designed as a timeline, the Paintings Archive section consists of available photographs of the seized works in chronological order. The lists containing statistical data based on year, city, date and total numbers concerning the paintings, are presented in the Numbers section.
The site will be updated as the new Picassos emerge; on the other hand, the missing images in the timeline will be pursued. Please Contact for any image, article and press clipping contributions.