Russian gallery says guard added eyes to avant-garde work

4 yıl önce

MOSCOW â A Russian gallery says one of its security guards has vandalized an avant-garde painting on loan from the countryâs top art repository by drawing eyes on the pictureâs deliberately featureless faces. It said the damage can be repaired.

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The Yeltsin Center in Ekaterinburg said the vandalism of the painting âThree Figuresâ by Anna Leporskaya occurred Dec. 7. It said the suspected culprit worked for a private company providing security at the gallery.

The painting, dating from the 1930s, shows three torsos and heads with hair but no facial features; the vandal drew eyes on two of them with a ballpoint pen. The Yeltsin Center said the painting has been sent for restoration to the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, which owns it.

The Russian news site RBK said a criminal case has been opened on charges that carry a sentence of up to three months in prison. The picture had been reportedly insured for 74.9 million rubles (roughly $1 million).

Leporskaya, who lived from 1900-1982, was a student of Kazimir Malevich, a seminal Russian abstract artist best known for his 1915 work âBlack Square.â