The forger of paintings told the court that the spirit of Ginger had entered him

Brno - Before the Brno Regional Court today stood Libor Prášil, who four years ago created nearly 50 copies of works by the leading Czech painter Jan Zrzavý with such skill that even some experts did not recognize them. Today in court, he said that he succeeded because the spirit of the famous artist entered him.
    Prášil is now being prosecuted along with a group of four other men. They are accused of having commissioned the creation of nearly 160 counterfeit artworks by Czech masters of the 19th and 20th centuries between 2003 and 2004. According to the case file, they made ten million crowns from selling them. They also provided false certificates of their origin for the fakes.
    According to his own words, Prášil suffers from a mild mental disorder. He did not succeed with his own creations, but he mastered Zrzavý's technique so well that he earned approximately 300,000 crowns in half a year from selling his fake paintings.
    "I identified so much with the spirit of the work and the author that I did not see the difference between myself and him. It was as if I summoned his soul," Prášil said today in court. He was able to create a copy of one of Zrzavý's works, estimated to be worth hundreds of thousands of crowns, from photographs in just three days.
    The painter defends himself by claiming that he considered the copies to be the results of his own work. He asserts that he did not intend to harm anyone. He was allegedly told that the replicas were made for people who were aware of this. They are clients so enamored with Zrzavý that they are satisfied with replicas when they cannot obtain the originals. However, the reality was different. The file indicates that the replicas were traded. Some people paid over half a million crowns for beautiful yet completely worthless canvases.
    Prášil only created copies of Zrzavý’s works for another perpetrator, Jan Trojan Jr. The question remains who created the replicas of works by Kristián Kodet, Karel Valtr, Vojtěch Sedláček, and others. The prosecutor hopes that this will be revealed during the main hearing.
    According to her, the dealings were organized by Jan Trojan Jr. He admits to having the copies made but claims it was only to fool his father, Jan Trojan Sr. According to his words, the son wanted to prove that his father, as an art expert, could not distinguish quality copies from originals. "He mistakenly thought a hair from Prášil’s brush in one of the paintings was one of Zrzavý’s hairs,” Trojan said with a smile.
    All defendants now face up to 12 years in prison. This case is one of the largest involving the counterfeiting of art objects in the modern history of the Czech Republic.
    The trial continues on Wednesday with the testimony of witnesses and experts. It is also unusual in that part of the fakes are present in the courtroom, which has turned into a small gallery for the duration of the trial.