THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING ART PIRACY

[Dmitry-Afremov]

**THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING ART PIRACY**

Today, a woman wrote to me and told me that she had purchased an Afremov painting from some website whose name I could barely pronounce on the first try.

And then came the sentence I hear all the time:

“Your paintings are beautiful, of course, but they were cheaper. And I really like the painting I received.”

Every time I hear something like this, I honestly don't know what I am supposed to say.

So maybe it is time to explain this properly, once and for all.

I am not offended when somebody doesn't buy a painting from us. Nobody owes us anything. If you don't like the price, don't buy it. If you don't like the painting, definitely don't buy it. There are thousands of wonderful artists, galleries and perfectly legitimate places to buy art.

What I genuinely do not understand is something else.

**Why are people so comfortable giving their money to someone who simply stole somebody else's work?**

There was Leonid Afremov.

A man who spent his life developing his own technique, his own style, and creating thousands of paintings. Behind every famous image you see today there was a canvas, paint, a studio, years of work and, ultimately, a piece of an artist's life.

Then some website appears.

They didn't purchase the rights to the image.

They have nothing to do with the artist.

They have nothing to do with our family.

They don't maintain Leonid's archive.

They didn't create anything.

They don't even need to own the actual painting.

They simply take an image of somebody else's artwork from the internet, send the file to a printer, and start selling “Afremov Art.”

Of course they are cheaper.

How could they not be?

**Stealing a JPEG is considerably cheaper than creating a work of art.**

Sometimes people even send me a photograph afterward:

“Look, Dmitry! Isn't it beautiful? I bought an Afremov for only $29!”

What exactly am I supposed to say?

Congratulations?

You did not buy an Afremov for $29.

You paid $29 for a reproduction of an image created by Afremov, sold to you by a person or company that may never have met Leonid, worked with Leonid, or even seen a real Leonid Afremov painting in their life.

If that is enough for you, that's fine. It is your wall, your money and your decision.

What I don't understand is why people then proudly tell the artist's family about it.

Imagine a slightly different situation.

You walk into a Rolex store and happily announce:

“Your watches are very expensive, so I bought exactly the same thing online for $50. Look! You can barely tell the difference!”

I doubt many people would walk into Rolex and proudly tell them what a great deal they got.

For some reason, when it comes to art, people think differently.

### “I don't care. I just want something beautiful on my wall.”

That is also a perfectly valid personal choice.

But then let's call things what they are.

You do not have a Leonid Afremov painting on your wall.

It is not an original.

It is not a work physically created by the artist.

It did not come from his studio.

It is not an object his hands ever touched.

What you have is a reproduction of an image.

Sometimes it may be a decent reproduction. Sometimes it is terrible. Sometimes it arrives almost the size of a sheet of paper, even though the seller's website somehow showed it hanging above a ten-foot sofa.

But it is still a reproduction.

And if it was manufactured without authorization from the copyright holder, there is another very simple question:

**Who exactly did you support with your money?**

The artist received nothing.

His family received nothing.

The people preserving his archive received nothing.

The gallery preserving and documenting his legacy received nothing.

An authorized producer received nothing.

The entire payment went to someone whose contribution may have consisted of downloading somebody else's photograph.

That is the part I genuinely struggle to understand.

### “But they are cheaper.”

Of course they are cheaper.

A pirate can almost always undercut the legitimate rights holder.

They have no cost of creating the artwork.

No cost of acquiring the rights.

No obligation to compensate the artist or copyright owner.

No archive to maintain.

No provenance to document.

Nothing new has to be created.

It is like comparing the price of a book in a bookstore with the price of a stolen PDF online.

Yes, the stolen file can be cheaper.

Strangely enough, the author doesn't become any richer because of it.

### And then the really interesting part begins.

Someone buys an “Afremov” somewhere.

A few years later they write to us:

“Hello. I own an original Afremov. How much is it worth?”

They send me a photograph.

It is a cheap print.

Or:

“Why didn't my painting come with a Certificate of Authenticity?”

Because we didn't sell it to you.

Or:

“Why does the quality look completely different from the photograph?”

Because the photograph came from us and the product came from somebody else.

And one of my favorites:

“I found an original Leonid Afremov on eBay for $200. Is it authentic?”

Friends.

If I see a genuine original painting by my father, actually worth thousands of dollars, being legitimately offered somewhere for $200, there is a very good chance I will buy it myself before you do.

But there is an important distinction here.

**Reselling a genuine painting and manufacturing a pirated copy are two completely different things.**

Someone who legally purchased a physical original by Leonid Afremov can, of course, later sell the painting they own. Genuine paintings can appear at auctions, on eBay, through collectors, estates and other secondary-market channels.

There is nothing wrong with that.

It is completely different from taking an image of Leonid's painting and, without authorization, manufacturing posters, canvases, mugs, T-shirts or so-called “paintings” from it.

That isn't a collector selling something he owns.

That is commercial use of somebody else's art.

### And do you know what is especially frustrating?

After all of this, the pirate isn't the one whose reputation suffers.

We are.

Go to Trustpilot. Go through forums, blogs and review websites, and from time to time you will find stories that sound something like this:

“I bought an Afremov painting and received a cheap fake.”

“It looked nothing like the photograph.”

“The quality was terrible.”

“This doesn't look like a real Afremov.”

And I have only one question:

**Where did you buy it?**

Because very often, the answer is that the person never bought anything from us at all.

They found some random website.

They saw our photograph.

They saw the name Afremov.

They paid that website.

That website manufactured something.

That website shipped something.

And then the customer goes online and writes:

**“Afremov sent me a fake.”**

What exactly am I supposed to do about that?

How can I refund money that you never paid me?

How can I replace a product that I never sold you?

How can I be responsible for the quality of something manufactured by a company that has absolutely nothing to do with us?

But the internet doesn't care about those details.

Someone puts **AFREMOV** in the title.

Google sees **AFREMOV**.

A review website sees **AFREMOV**.

And eventually that story lives forever on the internet as another complaint about Afremov.

Nobody seems particularly interested in the fact that an entirely different website received the money.

Nobody asks who actually manufactured the product.

Nobody checks whether the seller had any relationship with us whatsoever.

The surname is there, so somehow the complaint becomes ours.

It creates a remarkable situation:

**The pirate stole our photograph.**

**The pirate used my father's name.**

**The pirate took your money.**

**The pirate sent you a terrible product.**

**And Afremov gets the bad review.**

That is why, when I say **DO NOT SUPPORT PIRATES**, I am not talking only about lost sales.

Piracy damages trust in the artist's name.

Someone receives a horrible $20 print and sincerely thinks:

“So this is Afremov? I don't understand what everyone is so excited about.”

And the sad part is that this person may have **never seen a real Afremov in their life.**

That probably bothers me even more than losing the sale.

### So I have one big request.

If you see a website mass-producing and selling new reproductions of Leonid Afremov's work, please don't automatically think:

“Wow! I discovered a secret website where Afremov is five times cheaper.”

Send us the link instead.

We will check it.

The official websites of our family and gallery are:

https://afremov.com

https://prints.afremov.com

At afremov.com, we sell real paintings and works from our gallery, with the description explaining what exactly you are purchasing.

At prints.afremov.com, you can purchase our official prints and reproductions.

If what you want is a print, that's absolutely fine.

I don't believe everyone needs to buy an expensive oil painting.

Want an affordable reproduction?

Buy a reproduction.

**Just buy it legally.**

Then you know where it came from and who stands behind the product.

At least some of that money remains within the system that preserves the artist's work and name, rather than going to some random website owner who was selling phone cases yesterday, is printing Afremov today, and will be printing Van Gogh tomorrow.

### And one last thing.

Leonid died in 2019.

He will never paint another painting.

The number of genuine works he created is not increasing. Quite the opposite. Every year, more of his originals disappear into private collections around the world.

For me, this isn't simply a catalog of colorful pictures.

**This is my father's work.**

I remember these paintings being created.

I remember the studios.

I remember the paint, the canvases, the unfinished works.

I saw how many years of a human life went into creating what somebody today can download from the internet in a few seconds.

Maybe that is why this subject makes me angrier than it would make an ordinary person.

I am not asking you to buy from me.

**I am asking you to respect artists.**

All artists.

If you love the work of a living artist, buy something from the artist.

If you love the work of an artist who has passed away, buy from their official representatives, authorized producers, or from a legitimate secondary-market seller.

If you cannot afford it, honestly, it is better to buy nothing at all.

But please don't support businesses built on this simple formula:

**find somebody else's artwork → download it → print it → sell it.**

And if you do decide to buy from one of those sellers and receive a cheap, terrible reproduction instead of what you expected, please direct your complaint to the person who took your money.

Not to the artist whose name that seller used without permission.

**DO NOT SUPPORT PIRATES.**

Because in the end, they steal more than images.

They take money away from artists, trust away from customers, and reputation away from the very name they are exploiting to sell their products.

**Dmitry Afremov**
Son of Leonid Afremov
Afremov.com