The sculpture “Head with Horns”, attributed to Paul Gauguin, turned out to be the work of another artist. Getty Museum Los Angeles acquired sculpture in 2002. The exact amount of the transaction was not disclosed, but the work was bought for $ 3-5 million - a record price for the sculpture of Gauguin. Now the "

In a commentary to The Art Newspaper, a representative of the museum said that in December a group of experts from the institution and invited specialists completed an assessment of the authenticity of the work over the past few years.. The employee noted that during the purchase of the sculpture from the museum there was no reason to doubt the authenticity of the work. Now, on the institution’s website, the artist’s name has been replaced with “unknown,” birdinflight notes.

Initially, it was believed that the “Head with Horns” was created specifically by Gauguin, because photographs of the sculpture were found in his diaries, and her image appears in the artist’s drawings. It was thought that Gauguin carved the sculpture between 1895 and 1897, after his return to Tahiti. Moreover, the work itself could not be found until the 1990s - for a long time it was believed that it was lost. For the first time, “Head with Horns” was exhibited in 1997 - it was announced that it was taken from an unnamed private collection. Five years later, the sculpture was bought by the Getty Museum. After a while, experts began to doubt the authenticity of the work: Gauguin did not make such pedestals for his works, and the sculpture was not signed, which is unusual for the artist. Nevertheless, in recent years, "

Now experts do not know who the author of this sculpture is:

some believe that the Polynesian artist carved it specifically for the European market (there is no such devil incarnation in the traditional culture of the peoples of Oceania); others suggest that the author of the work could be a European who, like Gauguin, lived in Tahiti or traveled around the region. Researchers also found that the “Head with Horns” was created earlier than previously thought - until 1894, since the photographs found in Gauguin's diaries were taken at the end of 1894 (at that time the artist himself was in Paris).