the times | Tuesday September 15 2020 1GM 31
Wo r l d
Spanish police have seized four
forgeries of Modigliani paintings that
an auction house was trying to sell for
€8 million.
The fakes, which disappeared 52
years ago, came to the attention of
police in Valencia during a regular
screening of works of art on sale. Their
suspicions were raised as Modigliani is
deemed by experts to be among the
most forged artists.
Officials called in Greta García, a
Spanish art restorer and the president
of the Amedeo Modigliani Scientific
Research Foundation, which is based in
Italy and defends the artist’s legacy. Ms
García judged the works to be
counterfeits, saying they had first been
uncovered in the Netherlands decades
ago. “In 1968 the works were part of an
exhibition at the Centraal Museum in
Utrecht, which had to be closed a
month later because the artist’s
daughter denied that her father was the
creator of the 20 paintings in the
collection,” a police statement said. “InTwo of the four forgeries, which had
gone missing after a 1968 exhibitionIran is plotting to assassinate America’s
ambassador to South Africa to avenge
the killing of its most powerful general
in a drone strike, according to intelli-
gence papers seen by US officials.
Lana Marks, who designed luxury
handbags before she became America’s
top diplomat in Africa, was likely to
have been singled out for her closeness
to President Trump, the Politico news
site reported. She was a member of Mr
Trump’s exclusive Mar-a-Lago club in
Florida before she was appointed
ambassador a year ago.
The claimed assassination attempt is
apparently intended to avenge the kill-
ing of General Qasem Soleimani, head
of the overseas branch of Iran’s Revolu-
Iran ‘plots to kill’ America’s handbag envoy
South Africa
Jane Flanagan Cape Town
Richard Spencer
tionary Guard. Iranian officials have
dismissed the allegation as “custom-or-
dered, biased and purposeful”. “We
advise the American officials to stop
resorting to hackneyed and worn-out
methods for anti-Iran propaganda,”
said Iran’s foreign ministry.
The claim also appeared to surprise
the South Africans. “We only became
aware of this report this morning,” the
government said.
US intelligence chiefs are said to have
been aware of threats to Ms Marks, 66,
since early this year but details had
become more specific. The diplomat
has been informed of the plot which,
according to documents cited by Politi-
co, involves Iran’s embassy in Pretoria.
The US embassy said it could make
no comment on whether the ambassa-
dor’s security had been increased or
whether she had changed her routine.Intelligence officials have sug-
gested that carrying out an
attack in South Africa could be
easier than targeting American
diplomats in countries where
there is more security co-ordina-
tion.
General Soleimani, 62, oversaw
the operations of Iran-backed
militias across the Middle East,
including in Iraq, where they
have waged war on US and Brit-
ish troops.
Mr Trump ordered the drone
strike near Baghdad airport in
January after a series of missile
attacks on American bases in the
country, and an attempt to
storm the US embassy inBaghdad. He said the general
had been planning further
attacks, though White House
officials have since given a vari-
ety of justifications for the kill-
ing.
Iran’s immediate response to
the death of General Solei-
mani was a missile attack by
the Revolutionary Guard
on two bases containing
US and British troops. No
one was killed.
Iran has a history of
assassinations on west-
ern soil, but targeting a
US ambassador would be
a new step.
South Africa is one of a
handful of countries with
which it enjoys friendly rela-
tions. It seemed unlikely thatTehran would wish to jeopardise these
with such a brazen plot, argued Na’eem
Jeenah, the director of the Afro-Middle
East Centre, a think tank.
Ms Marks was born in East London,
in the Eastern Cape province, where
many properties cost less than her
sought-after accessories. Her designs
include a $400,000 “Cleopatra clutch”
bag for Li Bingbing, a Chinese actress.
There was speculation at the time of
her appointment that Ms Marks’s
charm and networking skills would
compensate for her lack of experience
in diplomacy and that she was being
deployed to repair some of the offence
caused by Mr Trump, who has shown
little interest in Africa.
In 2018 he described some of its
nations as “shitholes” and suggested a
wall across the Sahara as a way to deal
with Europe’s migration issue.Police seize Modigliani fakes on sale for €8million
2014, after remaining 46 years out of
the world of buying and selling works of
art, they reappeared and some of them
were sold,” it added.
Ms García confirmed that the four
paintings belonged to the Dutch exhi-
bition, which had been advertised to
the public as representing previously
unknown works created by Modigliani
using a new technique.
“After their removal [from the
exhibition] the works went missing and
were ‘dormant’ until a few years ago
when several appeared on sale in
galleries in Luxembourg, the Nether-
lands and Taiwan,” she told El País. One
of those on sale in Valencia, she added,
had featured in an exhibition in Seoul
in 2018.
The works of Modigliani, who was
born in Italy in 1884 and died of tuber-culosis aged 35 in 1920, have become
increasingly popular and plagued by
forgeries. Nu couché (sur le côté gauche),
a daring nude by the vagabond artist
that shocked Paris in 1917, was sold for
$157.2 million in 2018. Earlier that year
20 works attributed to him in an Italian
exhibition, a third of its total, were
judged to be fakes by scholars.
The artist’s heady lifestyle of affairs,
absinthe and hashish, combined with
the scandal caused by his nude
portraits, has given him a reputation as
a dissolute and tragic figure. “All collec-
tors want to have one of his works,” Ms
García said. “Modigliani does not rep-
resent a school or a style, it is simply
him. In the collector’s sticker album
there must be a Picasso from the pink
period... and a Modigliani, who only
signed between 300 and 400 works.”Harvest time Workers pick grapes at a vineyard near Schengen, Luxembourg, which produces Auxerrois, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer and Pinot Noir
Navalny allies
win in city
of poisoning
Russia
Marc BennettsAlexei Navalny’s allies yesterday cele-
brated symbolic victories at elections in
the Siberian city where he is believed to
have been poisoned with novichok, as
President Macron of France urged
Russia to investigate “without delay”
the attempt on the opposition figure-
head’s life.
Mr Navalny, 44, collapsed on a plane
on August 20 after visiting Tomsk,
1,800 miles east of Moscow, to promote
opposition candidates and investigate
local pro-Kremlin lawmakers accused
of corruption. He was flown to a clinic
in Berlin two days later.
The Berlin clinic where Mr Navalny
is being treated said yesterday his
health was improving and he had been
removed from a ventilator. It also said
he was briefly able to get out of bed.
Doctors in Germany said Mr Naval-
ny had been the victim of an attack with
novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent. A
spokesman for Angela Merkel, the Ger-
man chancellor, said yesterday that lab-
oratories in Sweden and France had in-
dependently confirmed this.
Berlin has said it will hold Russia
responsible for the attack unless it
proves otherwise, a stance that was
backed by Mr Macron yesterday. The
French leader told Mr Putin in a tele-
phone call that it was essential Russia
carried out a “credible and transparent
investigation” into the use of novichok,
a banned chemical weapon.
Moscow has said it has seen no evi-
dence that Mr Navalny, who emerged
last week from an induced coma, was
poisoned, and has accused Germany of
trying to “discredit” Russia.
In Tomsk, Ksenia Fadeyeva, the head
of Mr Navalny’s campaign headquar-
ters, and Andrei Fateyev, another of his
activists, both triumphed at city council
polls in the Siberian city. The two pro-
Kremlin lawmakers that Mr Navalny
had accused of corruption lost their
seats. “It was crucial to win after what
happened [to Mr Navalny] in Tomsk,”
Ms Fadeyeva, 28, said.
Elsewhere in Sunday’s regional elec-
tions, President Putin’s ruling United
Russia party claimed the governorships
in all 18 regions where voting took
place. Golos, an independent election
monitoring group, said it was investi-
gating reports of ballot stuffing. There
were also reports of intimidation
against election monitors.JULIEN WARNAND/EPALana Marks was born and
grew up in South AfricaSpain
Isambard Wilkinson Madrid