A trove of paintings and rare books from the collection of a fugitive Russian billionaire has been found near Moscow. The art had been missing from Alexei Ananyev’s private museum, the Institute of Russian Realist Art (IRRA), and was allegedly found in a storage facility next to the Church of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God. The Russian journalism website Mash.ru first broke the story earlier this month.
Ananyev made his fortune in IT and banking with his brother Dmitry, and was well known in Russia for owning the largest collection of
Socialist Realism in the country. He opened the IRRA for his collection in 2011, which included around 500 works by artists like Alexander Deinek, Arkady Plastov, and Sergei and Alexei Tkachev, according to
ARTnews.
But the institution came under scrutiny in 2017 when the Ananyevs’ bank, Promsvyazbank, was bailed out by the state and transferred to new ownership. The new management claimed hundreds of millions of rubles worth of art was missing from the IRRA, which the museum denied, according to
The Art Newspaper. The museum’s art director also said ownership of the collection was transferred to a foundation separate from Ananyev and his bank years ago. The IRRA’s website says the museum is “closed indefinitely.”
The recently discovered art will most likely be distributed among state museums, according to Russian lawyer Andrei Knyazev. Knyazev told Kommersant FM radio, according to TAN: