Thirty-nine works attributed to Piero Manzoni were found to be forgeries and thus destroyed

The Civil Court of Milan has declared thirty-nine paintings attributed to Piero Manzoni (Soncino, 1933 - Milan, 1963) to be forgeries, so they have been destroyed. The works belonged to baritone Giuseppe Zecchillo, who in the 1990s created an association “Friends of Piero Manzoni” through which he attempted to promote and spread libelous tales about the not-always-authentic works owned by members.

The decision to destroy them was made by the Piero Manzoni Foundation in agreement with the collector’s heir to avoid spreading false works. The thirty-nine works destroyed were all Achromes, one of the great Lombard artist’s best-known strands of research. The Fondazione Manzoni’s legal interventions combined with the collaboration with the Carabinieri’s Nucleo Tutela Patrimonio Culturale managed to stop the circulation of fakes attributed to Manzoni: ten other works had been destroyed in Monza in 2016, and a total of 65 works have been declared inauthentic in civil court to date.

A new online general catalog of the artist’s authentic works will soon be published. “Manzoni’s collectors,” reads a note, “can therefore sleep peacefully; the artist’s foundation has not only rigorously defined the body of authentic works that will soon be on a new general online catalog but, as this latest episode also confirms, it is moving firmly against those who try to disseminate fake works.”

Thirty-nine works attributed to Piero Manzoni were found to be forgeries and thus destroyed

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