Le Monde reported yesterday that art historian and former Centre George Pompidou director Werner Spies had been ordered to pay damages in the order of EUR 650,000 to the purchaser of a painting. Tremblement de terre purportedly was a work of Max Ernst. Spies, a world-leading expert on Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso, had, according to the Tribunal de grande instance de Nanterre, authenticated the painting and delivered an expert opinion on which the purchaser had relied. Tremblement de terre, however, turned out to be fake. It had been produced by Wolfgang Beltracchi, the man at the centre of Germany’s biggest art scandal for decades. Read More