The Greats NFT From Wolfgang Beltracchi

The Greats NFT release is now underway and this is a follow up to the short article we published a few days ago on our NFT page. In partnership with Hashmasks, Beltracchi’s set of 4,608 pieces of art as NFTs is a rare opportunity to obtain digital artwork from one of the best forgers of the 21st Century.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the art world reacts to Beltracchi’s NFT as he’s banned from exhibiting his artwork in most of the top galleries around the world. After decades of selling his forgeries to galleries he was eventually convicted and imprisoned in 2011. Will the art world now accept he’s a very accomplished artist in his own right and exhibit the NFTs in their galleries or purchase them for their clients?

Traditionally museums of fine art and galleries relied on customers physically visiting them to see the art works but in recent years, following the Covid pandemic, more and more have online galleries. This makes art work available to the masses and many would argue that The Greats NFT by Beltracchi should be included. Only time will tell if the art world will accept their own shortcomings regarding provenance of Beltracchi’s former works.

Although there are fake NFTs available in the market it’s a simple procedure to check their authenticity (provenance) based on the Smart Contracts and cryptographic hashes that generated them. Would the master forger himself be offended if galleries had exhibitions containing hundreds of copies of his NFTs rather than the originals? As the sale progresses we will monitor media coverage to see if museums, galleries or known art collectors acknowledge they have obtained one of The Greats. Personally we feel it would be misguided for the art world to miss out on this rare opportunity and we want to see fine art NFTs made available to all, either through ownership or online galleries.