Hundreds of Russian and Ukrainian avant-garde forgeries have been sold to private and public collections over the past twenty years as the BBC uncovers in a new documentary.

Authenticity has never been more important in the art and art finance sectors as it is today. The statistics provided by this report force us to ask the question posed: “can the art world continue to resist consumers’ [and market participants’] demands for more transparency…?”.

Imaging techniques primarily highlight the processes that the artist has undertaken in producing a given artwork. Although useful to determine areas of alteration or conservation, imaging techniques are not useful in the context of proving the authorship of an artwork unless assessed alongside reliable comparative data.