French Authorities Seize Oligarch’s Painting Before It Leaves for Russia

The spokesman declined to say the place the works have been being held, “for obvious security reasons.”

Until Apr. 3, the 2 work had been on show on the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris as a part of “The Morozov Collection: Icons of Modern Art,” an enormous exhibition of works that when belonged to the Russian textile magnates Ivan and Mikhail Morozov. Their assortment, which incorporates works by Gauguin, Van Gogh and Picasso, was expropriated a couple of century in the past, after the October Revolution, and have become state property.

Most of the work within the present got here from Russian state museums, together with the State Hermitage Museum, in St. Petersburg, and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, in Moscow. Under a 1994 French legislation designed to encourage worldwide artwork loans, these works can’t be seized by French authorities, as a result of they have been lent by a overseas authorities, stated Freda Matassa, an artwork marketing consultant who has helped develop an analogous anti-seizure legislation in Britain.

But, Ms. Matassa stated, the French legislation doesn’t apply to works owned by personal people.

Representatives of Mr. Aven and the Museum of Avant-Garde Mastery didn’t reply to requests for remark. A spokeswoman for the Louis Vuitton Foundation stated it could not remark, both.

Even earlier than the seizures, some artwork cargo companies anticipated “Morozov Collection” works to expertise difficulties returning to Russia, as a result of the conflict in Ukraine has interrupted conventional routes for air and street freight. The most direct route into Russia from Western Europe is now through Finland, but final week, Finnish customs officers impounded three shipments of wonderful artwork on the border between the 2 international locations, suspecting that the cargo breached European Union sanctions. The works have been swiftly launched when it turned obvious they fell exterior the sanctions’ scope.

The French tradition ministry stated it was additionally protecting a 3rd portray from “The Morozov Collection” in Paris for security causes. That work, “Portrait of Margarita Kirillovna Morozova” (1910), by Serov, belongs to the Dnipropetrovsk Art Museum, within the jap Ukraine metropolis of Dnipro, which is anticipated to quickly be the topic of a Russian assault. Ukrainian authorities requested the portray stay in Paris till it’s secure for it to be returned, the tradition ministry spokesman stated.