MICHELE AMATO
(Rome 20th century)
Young dancer,... Lot 37
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MICHELE AMATO
(Rome 20th century)
Young dancer, 1960s/'70s
Bronze sculpture, h. cm. 63.5
Apocryphal signature 'A. Martini,' on base
BIBILIOGRAPHY
Federico Zeri Foundation online, card no. 82077
In 1966, a Roman antiquarian, Michele Amato, began selling Arturo Martini's terracottas from Anticoli, where Amato owned a cellar filled with sketches and sculptures left to his father by Martini himself, who had stayed in the area in 1925. Amato, a sharp and experienced dealer, sold more than a hundred pieces in a year, about fifty of which were purchased by the Marlborough Gallery in Rome. The discovery of such a substantial nucleus of unpublished works, however, attracted the suspicions of critic and antiquarian Ettore Gian Ferrari, president of the National Syndicate of Modern Art Dealers, which at that very time was engaged on two fronts: the professional qualification of antiquarians through the establishment of a register and the promulgation of laws to protect against forgeries. While Gian Ferrari cautiously took stock of the case, the world of art criticism had already pronounced itself in favor of the autography of the Anticoli statues. From here on, the story trespasses into the judicial record and winds its way through accusations by Gian Ferrari and defamation lawsuits by the owners of the pieces. The five trials alternately ruled in favor of the opposing sides, until the final ruling, which established that all the Anticoli sculptures sold by Amato were forgeries. Tempers, however, were far from appeased, and champions on both sides began to challenge each other in exhibitions: Gian Ferrari in 1979 staged one in Milan entitled 'Arturo Martini, authentic and fakes compared'; in Rome, in response, the Marlborough Gallery staged an exhibition with Anticoli's 56 sculptures, an event that was a resounding success and was applauded by the leading art historians and artists of the time, from Cesare Brandi to Maurizio Calvesi to Nello Ponente, from Renato Guttuso to Fausto Melotti. The latter all agreed that the works were authentic. The case seemed without solution; meanwhile, Amato was already dead, taking his secrets to the grave. Finally, in the 1980s, Amato's widow finally confessed, with some pride, the whole truth. It had been the antiquarian who had produced at least a hundred pieces over the years: he had made them with imitative diligence in the case of replicas faithful to the model, while in other cases he had devised new subjects in the Martinian style, with real expertise and a certain uninhibited inventiveness. The technical part had been solved with accuracy, as Amato used old wood and rusty tools, and induced the antique color, typical of the pieces, with simple expedients such as repeated dyes of tea and coffee given roughly in several coats.
Text taken from 'Authentic art forgeries, between the embarrassment of critics and the pride of forgers,' by Valentina Casarotto, 2015
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