The Devil Wears Rothko: Inside the Art Scandal that Rocked the World

The Devil Wears Rothko charts the explosive demise of Knoedler Gallery, New York’s oldest and most prestigious art galleries with detailed and salacious insight into one of the world’s largest art frauds.

From the moment an eccentric woman walked into the Knoedler Gallery with a Mark Rothko painting, everyone was fooled. For the next ten years, she—along with a group out of Hollywood central casting—ran a $80 million forgery ring through Knoedler Gallery, selling or consigning forty expertly crafted counterfeits they claimed to be the works of Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko, and others.

The acclaimed documentary, Made You Look (2020), attests to the explosive investigative work and storytelling of Avrich. The Devil Wears Rothko utilizes these talents all the more effectively, featuring new information, evidence, and inside stories on how an eccentric art dealer, master forger, and two cunning con artists managed to fool the world of art over a period of ten years. Among these individuals were billionaire art collectors, journalists, and esteemed art appraisers. By the time the house of cards finally fell, the Hammer family owned Knoedler Gallery and a dozen collectors had been conned into buying over $80 million in fake art.

As the world continues to be intrigued by this case, The Devil Wears Rothko exposes such an unimaginable cast of characters and villains that even Hollywood would struggle to invent.

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Release date

Audiobook: 10 June 2025