Note Type
Historical NoteNote
Anthony Gene Tetro (born 1950), known as Tony Tetro, is an art forger known for his perfectionism in copies of artwork produced in the 1970s and 1980s. Tetro never received formal art lessons but learned from books, through painting, and through experimentation. Over three decades, Tetro forged works by Rembrandt, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Norman Rockwell, and others. Tetro’s paintings and lithographs, known for their perfectionism, were sold by art dealers and auction houses as legitimate works and hang in museums and galleries around the world. He was caught after Hiro Yamagata found a forgery of his own work for sale in a gallery. In 1991, Gary Helton, an investigator for a California district attorney, described Tetro as “one of the two major [art] forgers in the United States.”