A canvas belonging to Petr Aven, a deemed oligarch near Putin, which had been lent to the Vuitton Foundation for the exhibition “Icons of Modern Art”, completed on April 3, will remain in the hexagon.
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France decided on Saturday 9 April to seize a painting from the Morozov collection belonging to a Russian oligarch and loaned to the Louis Vuitton Foundation for the exhibition “Icons of Modern Art”, which was held In Paris from September 22, 2021 to April 3, 2022. The seizure of another canvas is also under study. The rest of the collection, consisting of about 200 works by Gauguin, Renoir, Matisse, Bonnard or Van Gogh, is not concerned and should be repatriated to Russia in the coming days.
One of the seized canvas is a self-portrait realized in 1910 by the painter Piotr Kontchalovski (1876-1956), considered as the “Russian Cézanne” – and incidentally grandfather of directors Andrei Kontchalovsky and Nikita Mikhalkov. The painting belongs to Petr Aven, a renowned oligarch near Vladimir Putin. Before the triggering of the war in Ukraine, this former Councilor of Boris Elsin directed Alfa Bank, the largest commercial bank in Russia. According to Bercy, it is the third seizure of a work of art in France since the beginning of the conflict.
The second table is a portrait of Timofei Morozov made in 1891 by the Valentin Serrov painter (1865-1911), former student of Ilia replenis and one of the great Russian portraitists. The canvas was lent by the Moscow’s avant-garde museum, created in 2001 by the Russian contractor Moshe Kantor, the first shareholder of the Acron Fertilizer Company and also close to Vladimir Putin.
“No ambiguity”
“The particular situation of a work held by a private foundation, linked to an oligarch that has just been added to the list of personalities covered by gel measures, is the subject of a review by the services State “, explain to the Ministry of Culture. While waiting for the government’s decision, Valentin Serrov’s painting will remain in France.
A time threatened with seizure also, another self-portrait of Piotr Kontchalovski, realized in 1910 and owned by the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation of Moscow, should finally be able to leave in Russia. The authorities believe that the activities of the businessman Vladimir Semenikhin, who holds with his wife the Ekaterina Foundation, do not fall under the sanctions regime. Mr. Semenikhin owns Stroyteks, one of the largest construction companies in the Russian capital.
The rest of the collection, whose fate was the subject of speculation since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, will not finally be worried. The reason ? Works belong to the Russian state and not to individuals. The Morozov collection was nationalized in 1918 and is now disseminated in the main state museums of the country, such as the Pushkin Museum and the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow, or the Hermitage Museum, in St. Petersburg. “France wants to make the collection, there is no ambiguity. These are works of Russian heritage and it is normal that they come back to Russia,” justifies the entourage of the Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot .
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