Art: Painter X & Dealer Y

Diffidently, and often only when pressed to show the better pictures that he might have in the back room, would Vienna Art Dealer Willy Verkauf let customers see the works of the talented new painter in his stable. The works were mostly collages—cockeyed compositions of doors leading to nowhere, scraps of road maps, photographs of machinery, tiny human beings caught in endless labyrinths. They proved immensely popular. In the past three years, Verkauf has been responsible for selling about 100 pictures by André Verlon; he arranged one-man shows for him in Munich and Düsseldorf, found gallery outlets for him in Paris, Basel and Milan. Last week Verlon was on show at the Brook Street Gallery in London, and Manhattan’s D’Arcy Galleries will exhibit his work next fall. André Verlon is doing nicely for a man who does not exist.

A Gushing Monograph. It was three years ago that Dealer Verkauf, upon finishing a collage, brushed in the name of Verlon and thereby turned a pleasant hobby into a thriving little business. Soon Verlon collages began turning up at Vienna shows, and among a small group of collectors, he became known as a hot discovery. Dr. Werner Hofmann, director-designate of Vienna’s projected Museum of the Twentieth Century, not only snapped up a Verlon for his new collection, but also wrote an enthusiastic article about the new painter in Zurich’s English-language Art International. The good doctor found the collages to be “a series of insights into the condition of man. The conception is ironic and bitter. It attests to a suffering, mutilated humanity, and yet there are successful concentrates in which man’s dark and unredeemed nature, his vacuity and homelessness seem to change suddenly into a wild ‘nevertheless.’ ” Dealer Verkauf lost no time in turning the article into a little monograph in French. German and English.

When Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art began gathering its controversial “assemblage” show (TIME, Oct. 6 ), it included a Verlon. Biographical details about the man were scarce—Verlon, Verkauf explained, was too shy to seek publicity—and Verkauf was always vague about his whereabouts. Finally a woman art critic notified Verkauf that she wanted to do a piece about Verlon for the semiannual Quadrum. “I had a sleepless night,” he recalls. “I got up at 2 in the morning, wondering what I would tell her. I was nervous because she was a respected critic and I did not want to get her into trouble. So I told her, I am Verlon.’ ”

Chicanery? Last week Vienna art circles were in a quandary about the Verlon-Verkauf affair. The critics—including Dr. Hofmann—did not withdraw their praise for the collages, but Verkauf’s elaborate hoax did seem to smack of chicanery. If Painter X can promote himself under the name of Dealer Y, Dr. Hofmann pointed out, he could carry the process one step farther and create a demand for Painter X by buying him under the name of Collector Z. Says Hofmann: “The unknown painter who buys his own works at auction to increase their value is not unknown to modern art.”