Dealing from Park Avenue

Art frauds seem to be popping up all over. Only a week after the announcement that Texas Oilman Algur Meadows owns 44 fakes (TIME, May 19), Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan disclosed the indictment of New York Dealer David Stein, 31, on 97 charges of counterfeiting and grand larceny. Stein may never have sold a painting to Meadows, but according to the D.A.'s office, he painted, signed and faked the papers for 33 Chagalls, seven Picassos, and one Matisse, unloading them on five other collectors and seven dealers for $165,800. Among those who bought from Stein were Colonel Edgar Garbisch, a leading collector of American primitives, who paid $14,000 for an unpretentious little Picasso for his wife's dressing room, and the E.J. Korvette discount chain.

Stein, a British doctor's son with a degree in French literature from the University of Paris, had no formal art training. According to the D.A., he discovered his knack for successful copying in 1961 when he limned a Picasso drawing, signed it and sold it to a Paris art dealer; he followed with two small Chagall gouaches, which he sold in London for $4,000 each. Stein arrived in the U.S. two years ago, and soon set up in a stylish Park Avenue gallery-apartment, where he had a number of genuine Chagalls and Picassos.

Business was brisk there and at the store-front gallery he operated in Palm Beach. But at least one buyer became suspicious of Stein's paintings and his surprising ability to produce papers from Paris guaranteeing them on almost overnight notice. Manhattan Dealer Irving Yamet took his six Chagalls to the D.A.'s office.

The real Marc Chagall has since certified Stein's work as false, as has Picasso. But, said the D.A., the artist who did his best to help the cops was none other than David Stein. When detectives raided his apartment last September, they found half-done paintings, stamps that Stein had used to forge Paris gallery certificates--and a photograph of Stein, stripped to his handsome waist, in front of an easel busily painting a Chagall.

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