Three previously unknown oil paintings attributed to avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich are on display at the National Museum in Bucharest, the capital of Romania.
If proven authentic, they could be worth more than €100 million, but a top expert says the story behind their origin is problematic.
Now the museum that exhibits them refuses to say whether the works are real.
Kazimir Malevich, born in Ukraine, is considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.
On the art market, his paintings are worth more than any other Ukrainian or Russian painter, and one work was sold in 2018 for a record 73 million euros.
But during a move in 2023, three unknown Malevich paintings were discovered under the mattress of Israeli pensioner Eva Levando, according to Yaniv Cohen, an Israeli businessman from Bucharest and the owner of the works.
The pensioner is Cohen's wife's grandmother, and she gave him the works.
The pictures have a title. Suprematist composition with green and black rectangle (1918) Cubo-futuristic composition (1912-1913) and Suprematist composition with a red square and a green triangle (1915-1916), and are on display at the Romanian National Museum of Contemporary Art until the end of August.
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The exhibition is sponsored by Cohen's Dental Clinic.
And yet, the art world is suspicious.
Konstantin Akinsha, a Ukrainian-American expert, told the BBC that the evidence proving their history and linking them to Malevich's study is incomplete.
"The three works now on display in Bucharest were not documented, photographed, or exhibited during the artist's lifetime," says the art historian and curator, co-author of the American Association of Museums' guide to researching the provenance of works of art.
Is Stalin to blame?
Eva Levando inherited her paintings from her father, an accountant from Odessa at a time when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.
He allegedly bought one of them and received the other two in exchange for his services.
The lack of evidence to support this story is explained by Stalinist repression of modernist art, Cohen told the BBC.
Levando emigrated to Israel in 1990, taking the works with her, according to Cohen.
"There is no evidence of the circulation of Malevich's works on the Russian or Ukrainian art market from the late 1920s and early 1930s."
"The records kept by Malevich do not mention private sales after 1917," says Konstantin Akinsha.
But to support his claims, Yaniv Cohen presented certificates from Kiev art historian Dmitry Horbachev, who described the works as "first-class examples" of Malevich's style.
He concluded this by analyzing the style and technique of the paintings.
But Dmytro Horbachev had previously verified the disputed works, including a painting allegedly removed from Vienna's Albertina Museum after doubts were raised about its authenticity.
The art historian claims to be a consultant for auction houses Sotheby's and Christie's.
But "he does not work, nor has he ever worked, as a consultant for Sotheby's," a spokesman told the BBC.
Christis also denies any formal relationship.
Dmytro Horbachev did not respond to a request for an interview.
Yaniv Cohen says technical analysis confirms his claim.
The BBC reviewed reports on all three pieces made by IInstitute of Art Conservation and Color in Paris and the German laboratory of Elisabeth Jagers and Erhard Jagers.
Although they dated the pigments and other elements to Malevich's lifetime, the reports do not go so far as to claim that these works were painted by the famous painter.
Previously, reports from these two laboratories followed two images that were proven to be fakes in a BBC documentary. The Zaks Affair: Anatomy of a Fake Collectione.
When presented with our findings, Erhard Jagers told the BBC that technical analysis cannot prove the authenticity of an image.
The French laboratory said that the reports it writes "are not proof of authenticity" and that it has never issued a certificate of authenticity for Malevich's works.
Watch the video: Forgeries that fooled even the most prestigious museums
'The tip of the iceberg'
Yaniv Cohen insists he is not interested in selling the paintings, despite Dmytro Horbachev, who believes the paintings are authentic, estimating they could be worth between 137 and 163 million euros.
However, emails seen by the BBC suggest that they were offered as a guarantee for the loan.
The businessman denied any connection to this offer, saying he had no plans to monetize the paintings and was financially secure thanks to investments in cryptocurrencies.
Unhappy with the BBC's questions, Cohen threatened to "make BBC journalists disappear" and claimed he could hack their communications.
After Constantin Akinșa questioned the origin of the paintings, Romania's National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) distanced itself from them.
In a statement, MNAC called the exhibition a "curatorial experiment" and added that it did not possess "the expertise to confirm the authenticity of these specific works."
The museum relies on documents it received from Cohen and that the inclusion of his paintings in the exhibition "should not be interpreted as an institutional endorsement of their authorship or authenticity," they added in a statement.
Publicly known cases of disputed works by Malevich and other artists from that period are only the "tip of the iceberg," adding that "thousands of questionable works continue to circulate to this day," said Konstantin Akinsha.
The market for Russian and Ukrainian modernist art is full of works that are "obviously problematic," Reto Barmettler, a consultant for Russian painting at Sotheby's, tells the BBC.
"Good avant-garde paintings don't come out of nowhere, they have an obvious quality, they come with a documented provenance and, ideally, a history of exhibition," he explained.
He did not want to comment on the three works owned by Yaniv Cohen.
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