Artist Pleads Innocent to Mass Forgery

Anthony Gene Tetro, described by prosecutors as one of the nation’s most prolific art forgers, pleaded innocent today to copying the works of artists such as Chagall, Miro and Rockwell.

Tetro, 40, indicted on 44 counts of felony forgery, entered his plea before Superior Court Judge Gary Klausner, who assigned a public defender to represent him and set a pretrial hearing for July 19.

At a preliminary hearing in March, Mark Henry Sawicki, a former associate of Tetro, testified that he did $75,000 to $100,000 worth of business a year with Tetro between 1984 and 1989. Sawicki said he sold hundreds of works attributed to such artists as Joan Miro, Salvador Dali, Norman Rockwell and Hiro Yamagata.

Sawicki, who was charged with selling forged art last year, agreed to be wired with a tape recorder and, according to authorities, recorded a conversation in which Tetro is heard to say he “did a Chagall” and had other fake Chagalls “in the works.”

Sawicki said Tetro would practice the signatures of the artists he was copying.

“He would practice on note pads, scratch paper, sometimes even on the backs of damaged artworks,” Sawicki said at the preliminary hearing.

Sawicki, former owner of a Sherman Oaks gallery called Visual Environments, and Tetro are among several art dealers local and federal authorities have implicated in a multimillion-dollar art fraud investigation.