Read the text and answer questions 19), 20), 21), 22), 23) and 24).
Lawsuits claim Knoedler made huge profits on fakes
For more than a dozen years the Upper East Side gallery
Knoedler & Company was “substantially dependent” on profits
it made from selling a mysterious collection of artwork that is at
the center of a federal forgery investigation, former clients of
this former gallery have charged in court papers.
The analysis is based on financial records turned over as
part of a lawsuit against the gallery filed by Domenico and
Eleanore De Sole, who in 2004 paid $8.3 million for a painting
attributed to Mark Rothko that they now say is a worthless fake.
The Rothko is one of approximately 40 works that Knoedler,
which closed last year, obtained from Glafira Rosales, a littleknown
dealer whose collection of works attributed to Modernist
masters has no documented provenance and is the subject of
an F.B.I. investigation.
Between 1996 and 2008, the suit asserts, Knoedler earned
approximately $60 million from works that Ms. Rosales provided
on consignment or sold outright to the gallery and cleared $40
million in profits. In one year, 2002, for example, the complaint
says the gallery’s entire profit — $5.6 million — was derived
from the sale of Ms. Rosales’s works.
“Knoedler’s viability as a business was substantially —
and, in some years, almost entirely — dependent on sales from
the Rosales Collection,” the De Soles claimed last month in an
amended version of the suit they filed this year.
While the forgery allegations are well known and have
been the subject of three federal lawsuits against Knoedler, the
recent filings expand the known number of Rosales artworks
that were handled by the gallery, which was in business for 165
years, and assert that they played a pivotal role in the gallery’s
success. After the F.B.I. issued subpoenas to the gallery in the
fall of 2009, Michael Hammer, Knoedler’s owner, halted the sale
of any Rosales works. Knoedler ended up losing money that
year and in 2010, the court papers say.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/arts/design/knoe...