Wolfgang Beltracchi is one of the last old masters of painting. Globally, he is known for his art forgeries of famous artists including the likes of Heinrich Campendonk, Fernand Leger and Max Ernst. Notably, Beltracchi never copied any existing pieces. Instead, he would create completely new paintings that could have been made by the artists. Since his arrest, the traditional art elite has made it their utmost interest to prohibit the exhibition and sale of his artwork. Using the Ethereum blockchain, Wolfgang can circumvent the restrictions put upon him by museums, galleries and auction houses alike to give people around the globe access to his work.
The entire collection is the vision and creation of Wolfgang Beltracchi. His main responsibility was the art, but he also envisioned the structure of the collection itself. Similar to the first project by the Hashmasks team, the artist did not focus on creating whole physical pieces, but created many components that could be digitally manipulated to create the entire collection of 2,608 unique and original digital artworks.
There are a total of over 30+ series within “The Greats” collection. For most series, the art was custom created. However, for some eras such as his own era, Beltracchi re-used some of his best previous work.
This project has been in development for a total of 6 months. The work was split into two broad categories: (1) Creation of the physical components of the art and then digital art and (2) the development of the blockchain and web application. The team was located across three different continents while working on the project. The artist and his team operated from Switzerland.
There are a total of 30+ series in “The Greats” collection, each corresponding to a different era or style in art history. The information of the series is recorded in the metadata and will be revealed upon sale.
The sale will be a Dutch Auction with a starting price of 10,000 ETH and a minimum price of 3 ETH. Buyers can place bids at any point in time to receive an NFT. Once every single NFT has been sold or when the price reaches its minimum price of 3 ETH, the settlement price is determined. The settlement price is the price paid for the last NFT. Every single buyer than pays the settlement price and gets reimbursed the additional ETH that they put in the contract via their bid.
The Dutch auction enables the market to determine the right reservation price for each collector. It will start at a high price and enables buyers to place a bid at the price they are comfortable paying. Unlike other Dutch auctions, all buyers pay the same settlement price in the end, which will definitely be below the reservation price. This ensures that early buyers are not punished by having to pay a higher price.
You can mint the NFT from the homepage by connecting your Metamask to the application by clicking the “Connect Wallet” button. Alternatively, for buyers unfamiliar with blockchain applications, we are offering a small number of NFTs via a regular Auction on Binance Exchange.
“The Greats” uses Chainlink to access a verifiably tamper-proof source of randomness through its Chainlink VRF service. The sale will leverage Chainlink VRF to help ensure that all NFTs are distributed to users in a 100% randomized manner. Not only will this help prevent any malicious player from circumventing the sale’s integrity, but everyone can verify through cryptography that the process was indeed fair and unbiased.
To ensure full randomness in the distribution of the images and to avoid frontrunning, the precise image that a buyer receives will only be determined two blocks after it was minted. You can then see it in your private gallery.
No.
Vi Victa Vis AG is the Swiss company behind “The Greats” project. VVV consists of part of the team behind the Hashmasks. It was responsible for the development of “The Greats” project together with Wolfgang Beltracchi.
The Collecta group is the name of part of the team that is behind Hashmasks and The Greats. Moving forward all projects by this group will fall under this umbrella operation. Our goal here is to deliver projects in the art and NFT space focused on delivering value back to Collecta NFT holders in a multitude of ways while our team focuses on growing the Collecta brand, collector base and ecosystem.
The team behind Collecta does not simply work with any artist. It is important that the artist has an important story to tell. In Beltracchi’s case, the traditional artworld has barred him from exhibiting and selling his artwork. The natural idea is to use the Ethereum blockchain as intended: To give access to an otherwise censored individual. In addition, we wanted to create a “Fine Art” collection with a unique art concept.
«The Greats» was created by the part of team behind the Hashmasks. Naturally, there are some connections between the two projects:
1) Hashmask owners get an 1 ETH discount from the sales price
2) “The Greats” integrates the NCT token. By burning NCT 100,000, an owner can rename his/her Mundi. Per smart contracts, no re-namings are allowed, so choose your name wisely.
3) There is a special “Hashmask collection” hidden in “The Greats” collection. It consists of three pieces.
Thus, “The Greats” is both connected on a contractual level as well as artistic level to the Hashmasks.
Fine Art Collectible Token. FACT is an implementation framework to deliver an NFT that meets a specified set of features and functions. The goal of the FACT token is to become an industry standard for best practices of design.
You are getting a single digital production NFT and have the ability to mint a single physical production NFT when you choose. This can only happen one time.
No, it means you have the official specs from Beltracchi and can pay a vendor to make a physical painting and have it backed by an NFT on-chain. There is a process for linking the physical painting with the physical production NFT on-chain if the collector gets one made.
You can mint a single physical production NFT only once ever per digital production NFT. The digital production NFT is what you are buying during the primary sale.
There are many vendors all over the world that specialize in producing physical paintings based on high quality digital media. You would work with such a vendor and provide them the official specs for physical production and enter supporting information about the vendor(along with images) when you perform the owner attestation to link the physical production NFT and the physical painting produced by the vendor.