Fakes & Looted Art is Malte Sprenger’s second book on looted art, and I had the pleasure of designing it.
The visual identity is built around two colors: dusty purple and black. Purple introduces a sense of mystery and uncertainty around forgeries, while black suggests the obscured histories surrounding looted art.
For the cover, I pixelated Amedeo Modigliani’s Female Nude, Standing [Elvira] (Kunstmuseum Bern), turning a familiar artwork into something fragmented and difficult to authenticate. The distortion reflects the central question of the book: when an artwork’s history is uncertain, what can we really trust? I also “stole” fragments of the title lettering and incorporated them into the visual system—making the act of taking itself part of the design language.
Interested in the book? You can order a copy directly from Malte via email: maltesprenger@arcor.de
Artwork credits: Paintings reproduced in the book are works by their respective artists. Works by artists whose copyright has expired are in the public domain.
