How do you verify the authenticity of a blue-chip contemporary artwork?
Verifying artwork authenticity requires a three-step due diligence process: first, auditing the provenance (ownership history) and confirming inclusion in the artist's Catalogue Raisonné; second, reviewing a professional Condition Report; and third, validating the Certificate of Authenticity (COA) against stolen art databases.
1. The Risk of Incomplete Provenance
In the contemporary and blue-chip art market, an artwork is only as valuable as the story that proves it is what it claims to be. A gap in provenance—even a few years unaccounted for—can raise questions about authenticity, legal title, or undisclosed restoration, and materially affect an artwork's marketability.
For collectors new to international acquisitions, this is often the least visible risk and the most costly one. A work can look right, be priced right, and still carry a provenance gap that surfaces only at resale—or worse, at the point of legal dispute.
2. The 4-Step Due Diligence Checklist
Step 1: Provenance Audit
A rigorous provenance audit traces an artwork's full ownership history—through recognized galleries, auction records, and documented private collections—back as close to the artist's studio as possible. Every transfer of ownership should be verifiable and free of unexplained gaps.
Step 2: Exhibition & Literature History
Cross-referencing an artwork against exhibition catalogues, museum records, and published literature—including the artist's Catalogue Raisonné where one exists—confirms both authenticity and the work's standing within the artist's body of work.
Step 3: Condition Report & Inspection
A professional Condition Report, ideally supported by in-person or high-resolution inspection, documents the artwork's physical state—surface integrity, any restoration history, and structural stability. This protects a collector from undisclosed damage that could affect long-term value.
Step 4: Legal Clearance
Before any transaction closes, the artwork should be checked against international stolen art and title-dispute databases, and confirmed free of liens or competing ownership claims. This step protects the collector's legal title, not just the artwork's authenticity.
3. The Tessera Standard
Every work presented to a Tessera Contemporary collector has already completed this independent, third-party due diligence process before it ever reaches your inbox. Provenance is audited, exhibition and literature history cross-checked, condition independently assessed, and legal clearance confirmed—so that by the time you're evaluating a work, the diligence has already been done.
This is the standard behind every recommendation we make: not simply sourcing art, but verifying it.