THE CYPRUS Chamber of Fine Arts (EKATE) has expressed concern that a recent exhibition of copies of international masterpieces deliberately misled the public into buying pieces they believed to be of higher value.
Professor Daniele Ermes Donde, director of Switzerland’s Donde’s Musée Imaginaire, won a legal battle in 1984 decriminalising high-quality replicas of the masters’ works, organised the exhibition in Nicosia earlier this month.
An EKATE announcement by the association’s president Andreas Pharmakas said: “People who have purchased these copies have contacted EKATE asking if the paintings they bought would have any future value and if their purchase was a wise investment.”
Pharmakas continued that there had not been adequate information about the original paintings or who had made the copies and whether the process of reproduction took place in front of the original or a reprint.
The announcement also questioned whether it would have been more correct for each copy to be numbered so that the buyer would know its value as a common piece of work would be less valuable than a unique one.
“It is only right that the consumer knows how many thousand copies have been made of a particular work.”
Visitors to the exhibition saw that all the paintings were accompanied by certification from the Academy of Belle Arti of Brera in Milan citing that they were faithful copies and, like the originals, had a continually rising value in their own right.
During a press conference before the exhibition and in flyers at the show itself it was clearly stated that Donde had 14 experts working for him, each studying their particular master in depth in order to create the most faithful of replicas.
A large number of high-profile Cypriots, including three government Ministers, attended the exhibition’s opening on December 5, many of whom expressed interest in works.
Buyers joined the ranks of satisfied customers such as the Pope, Prince Albert of Monaco, Frank Sinatra, Sophia Loren, Roger Moore, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ivana Trump.
The exhibition also included original work from Donde himself with prices starting at £920 for the Italian School’s Surreal and Degas’ Dancer going up to £1,780 for Donde’s Portrait of a woman.
Klimt’s The Kiss would have set you back £1,780 with Van Gogh’s Self portrait with bandaged ear for £1,250 and Sunflowers yellow background at £1,500.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
