Original Fakes

S.H. Raza, one of India’s leading painters, was “stupefied and outraged” to discover that several paintings at an exhibition of his painting, which he was inaugurating, were fakes.

The Dhoomimal Art Gallery, which invited Raza to inaugurate the exhibit devoted to his works, shut down the show after Raza exposed the fakes.

Raza, 86, one of whose paintings recently sold for $1.4 million, says, “At this stage of my life, this was the last thing I wanted to do — grace an exhibition of my own fake paintings. I am so upset and cannot get over it.”

Uma Ravi Jain, owner of the gallery, that the paintings for the exhibition were sourced from the painter’s nephew and therefore did not arouse suspicion. The paintings were not copies of Raza’s work, but entirely unrelated paintings bearing his signature, what a Raza friend described as an “original fake.”