World's most prolific art forger 'just did it for fun'

The convicted "hippie painter" behind Germany's most spectacular art-forgery scandal has revealed that he faked the works of at least 50 famous painters over a career spanning decades and started because he wanted to "have fun, travel and meet women".

Wolfgang Beltracchi, 61, and his wife Helene, 63, were sentenced to six and four years respectively last October after a court found them guilty of forging 14 paintings by six well-known artists, including the German Expressionists Max Ernst and Heinrich Campendonk.

The paintings were the tip of the iceberg when it came to forged works. The couple is estimated to have inflicted losses on the art world totalling €34m (?28m) through the sale of the 14 forgeries alone. But they have also confessed to supplying top auction houses such as Sotheby's and Christie's with scores of other fakes. Their customers included celebrities such as the comedian, Steve Martin.

In his first interview since his trial, Beltracchi told Der Spiegel this week that he began his career back in the 1970s by painting works by old masters and later Jugendstil and Expressionist artists. He found his first customers at flea markets. But by the end of his criminal career he said, "the demand was so high, I could have easily have put 1,000 or 2,000 forgeries on the market".

Beltracchi, the son of a church restorer from the German town of Geilenkirchen, claimed to be so talented that even his art school refused to believe that the portfolio he submitted was his own. Although he sold several of his own works and had the beginnings of a promising artistic career in his own right, he admitted "spending hours messing around with one's own picture – that was nothing for me, I wanted to have fun, travel, meet women and live life". The forger, who has been dubbed the "eternal hippie" because of his shoulder-length hair and beard, said he spent almost a year in Amsterdam in the 1970s counterfeiting paintings.

But in the early 1980s he married Helene, the daughter of a lorry driver, and started larger-scale art forgery. He admitted he specialised in "filling the gaps" left by prominent artists and subsequently creating works the artists had never actually painted. He said Max Ernst's widow has described one of his forgeries as "the most beautiful Max Ernst I have ever seen".

For decades the con trick paid off handsomely. The Beltracchis bought an opulent €5m villa with a swimming pool in Freiburg and a country estate with a vineyard overlooking the sea in the South of France. They are reported to have spent €17,000 a month on shopping, hotels and travel alone. Their forging spree came to an abrupt end two years ago, thanks to scientific analysis of the paint Beltracchi used on a faked Campendonk.