Portrait of an Unknown Lady

Maria Gainza

2022-03 · Highbridge Audio · Skaito Kyla García

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New York Times Notable author Maria Gainza, who dazzled critics with Optic Nerve, returns with the captivating story of an auction house employee on the trail of an enigmatic master forger. In the Buenos Aires art world, a master forger has achieved legendary status. Rumored to be a woman, she specializes in canvases by the painter Mariette Lydis, a portraitist of Argentinean high society. But who is this absurdly gifted creator of counterfeits? What motivates her? And what is her link to the community of artists who congregate, night after night, in a strange establishment called the Hotel Melancolico? On the trail of this mysterious forger is our narrator, an art critic and auction house employee through whose hands counterfeit works have passed. As she begins to take on the role of art-world detective, adopting her own methods of deception and manipulation, she warns us "not to proceed in expectation of names, numbers or dates . . . My techniques are those of the impressionist." Driven by obsession and full of subtle surprise, Portrait of an Unknown Lady is a highly seductive and enveloping meditation on what we mean by "authenticity" in art, and a captivating exploration of the gap between what is lived and what is told.

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Maria Gainza was born in Buenos Aires, where she still resides. She has worked as a correspondent for the New York Times in Argentina, as well as for ARTnews. She has also been a contributor to Artforum, the Buenos Aires Review, and Radar, the cultural supplement from the Argentine newspaper Página/12.

Kyla Garcia is a film, stage, and television actress based in Los Angeles, California. She has earned an Audie Award nomination and seven AudioFile Earphones Awards for her work as an audiobook narrator.