On Friday June 11, the Swedish news site Kulturnyheterna revealed that several major Swedish auction houses and galleries have sold fake works of art for millions.
Tom Moore and Alexander Vasilenko are two names that have been circulating Swedish auction sites for several years, but these two contemporary artists don’t exist. An artist named Tom Moore is well known, but he is neither Swedish nor the creator of the works auctioned off. According to Kulturnyheterna, Alexander Vasilenko doesn’t seem to exist at all.
The information observed on the sites, which describes the works of the two artists as "exquisite" and a "realistic oil painting" are therefore invented from scratch. The proposed works are in fact photo montages created in Photoshop.
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The works of art have sold for between 2,000 and 6,000 SEK each and are said to have totaled more than 10 million SEK ($1,160,942). They have been offered and auctioned at some of Sweden's leading auction houses, such as Stockholms Auktionsverk, Bukowskis and others.
