The Golden Collection: for which paintings did Roman Abramovich pay $ 30-60 million
photo Fotodom / Rex Features
Billionaire Roman Abramovich and his girlfriend Daria Zhukova bought the most important collection of works by Ilya Kabakov - the most expensive living Russian artist Billionaire
Roman Abramovich (9th place in the Forbes rating, fortune - $ 12.1 billion) and his girlfriend Daria Zhukova bought a collection of works by the most expensive living Russian artist - Ilya Kabakov.
Paintings and installations have been collected by the famous American collector John Stewart for over 20 years. The collection includes 40 works by Kabakov, most of which were painted before the artist left the USSR in 1987. Thus, the collection includes eight albums from the series "10 Characters" (The 10 Characters), created in 1968-1975. Each album from 32 to 72 pages thick consists of leaves from a notebook with pencil drawings and text. The main theme of the works is the comprehension of the artistic movement of the 20th century. Albums were rarely exhibited, since they are fragile exhibits in themselves. Two albums from the series "10 Characters" are in the National Center for Art and Culture named after Georges Pompidou in Paris. Also in the collection of Stewart - works from the series "Holidays" (Holidays). 10 of them were shown in 2000 at Bard College in New York as part of the exhibition "Ilya Kabakov: 1969-1998". Holiday # 10 was sold at Phillips in London for $ 2.4 million in 2011.
In 2008, Ilya Kabakov was named the most expensive living Russian artist when his 1982 painting The Beetle was sold for $ 5.8 million at Phillips. Natalia Kolodzei, executive director of the American Kolodzei Art Foundation, which promotes 20th-century Russian art, says some of the works from the Stuart collection may cost the same. Ilya Kabakov's wife Emilia said that the Stewart collection is one of the world's largest collections of her husband's works and the best in terms of quality and cultural and historical significance.
The exact price at which Abramovich bought the unique collection is unknown. The art market says that the collection was asked for about $ 60 million. The general director of Skate's Art Market Research Sergey Skatershchikov told Bloomberg that the collection was put up for sale some time ago, its price ranged from $ 30 million to $ 60 million. It is not the first time that Abramovich and Zhukova have shown interest in Kabakov's work. In 2008, a retrospective exhibition of the artist's work was held at the Garage Center for Contemporary Art, which belongs to Zhukova. After that, the work "Red Carriage" was transferred to the collection of the "Hermitage".
Ilya Kabakov was born in 1933 in Dnepropetrovsk. He is considered one of the founders of Moscow Conceptualism, a trend in unofficial Soviet art that emerged in the early seventies. In the USSR, Kabakov also worked as illustrations for children's books and magazines. Since the late eighties, the artist has lived in New York. Kabakov's works are in the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.