John Myatt

John Myatt, (born 1945), is a British artist and was convicted of Art forgery who, with John Drewe, perpetrated what has been described as "the biggest art fraud of the 20th century".

The son of a farmer, Myatt attended art school and discovered a talent for mimicking other artists' styles but at first only painted for amusement and for friends. He worked as a songwriter for a time and claims authorship of the song "Silly Games", a UK no. 2 hit for Janet Kay in 1979, although this is attributed by Kay to producer Dennis Bovell and credited to Diana Bovell. He later worked as a teacher in Staffordshire.

When his wife left him in 1985, Myatt gave up teaching to spend more time with his children, and attempted to make a living by painting original works in the style of well-known artists. He placed an advertisement in Private Eye magazine which read "Genuine fakes. Nineteenth and twentieth century paintings from £150". He was initially honest about the nature of his paintings, but John Drewe, a regular customer, was able to re-sell some of his paintings as genuine works. When he later told Myatt that Christie's had accepted his "Albert Gleizes" painting as genuine and paid £25,000, Myatt became a willing accomplice to Drewe's fraud, and began to paint more pictures in the style of masters like Roger Bissiere, Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier, Jean Dubuffet, Alberto Giacometti, Matisse, Ben Nicholson, Nicolas de Staël and Graham Sutherland.

According to the police estimates, Myatt painted about 200 forgeries in a regular schedule and delivered them to Drewe in London. Police later recovered only sixty of them. Drewe sold them to the auction houses of Christie's, Phillips and Sotheby's and to dealers in London, Paris and New York.

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