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Why did Pablo Picasso's large and varied body of work make forgeries hard to police?

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Hear about William Henry Ireland's fake manuscripts of William Shakespeare including a letter written to his wife — Forgery A look at a letter supposedly written by William Shakespeare to his wife, Anne Hathaway; it was, in fact, faked by William-Henry Ireland.

Policing forgeries of Pablo Picasso’s work is exceptionally difficult due to the sheer scale and diversity of his output. As a prolific artist, Picasso created a vast number of works across a wide range of media, including canvas, paper, sculpture, and ceramics.1

His tendency to innovate and shift between varying styles throughout his career—rather than adhering to a single, consistent aesthetic—has made it challenging for scholars to establish a definitive corpus of his work. This difficulty in attribution, combined with the high prestige and market value associated with owning a "Picasso," creates a significant incentive for fraud. Consequently, the complexity of his body of work makes it hard for experts to reach a consensus on authenticity, leaving the market vulnerable to fraudulent representations that are difficult to police.21