Art: Zizi Does It

Raiding a purse snatcher’s hideout, Paris police were startled to find a signed Utrillo hanging on the wall. That started them on the trail of what may be the biggest ring of art forgers in recent years. Last week Paris cops nabbed the artist who forged the Utrillos. She was one Mme. Juliette Claude La Tour—”Zizi” to her Montmartre friends.

Zizi, a middle-aged little lady with brown, shoulder-length hair, was sorry to be caught, but said she was not a bit sorry to stop copying Utrillo. The 63-year-old modern’s cool, empty streets thrilled her not at all, said Zizi. It would be hard to forge the art of her favorites, Da Vinci and Velasquez, she said, “but my Utrillos are better painted than the master’s.”

Unruffled, the master looked over her imitations, found seven things wrong with one canvas. Sample: the trees were “much too regular and the foliage too full.”