Everyone's An Art Critic

Anna Leporskaya was a Soviet Union artist ....

'Three Figures' (1932–1934) By Anna Leporskaya

 ..... who was apparently famous in the Soviet block for designing buildings and exhibitions, as well as her paintings and ceramics.

But although the Soviet era ended much of her work is still being displayed in art galleries and museums across Russia, including one of her works, 'Three Figures' (1932–1934), being loaned to the Yeltsin gallery, in the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg, from the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

Ms Leporskaya died in 1982, and was a former student of the Suprematist Kazimir Malevich. She also worked alongside other notable avant-garde artists Nikolai Suetin and Lev Yudin. She is actually best known for her work in porcelain.

However her enduring fame appears to have eluded a private security guard in Yekaterinburg, who on his first day in the job, had been hired to guard the Three Figures, as well as the other works being displayed on loan. So instead of appreciating the works on display, he apparently doodled a pair of eyes on to two of the three figures in the Leporskaya painting with a ballpoint pen.

The Eyes Now Have It

This vandalism was seemingly noted on the 7th of December 2021, when two visitors spotted the 'new eyes' and reported the damage to the gallery. The painting, which was valued at around £740,000 ($1 million), had to be returned to its home museum for restoration, at a cost reckoned to be around 250,000 roubles (£2,468; $3,345).

Protective screens have since been installed by the centre on all remaining works in the exhibition. The 60-years-old guard was also fired, and the matter reported to the local police on the 20th of December after an internal investigation identified the culprit. 

But the Ministry of Internal Affairs initially declined to initiate a criminal investigation, as they deemed the damage to be "insignificant" .... however the ministry of culture, unhappy with this lack of response, later complained to the prosecutor general's office about the decision, and the police finally opened a criminal investigation for vandalism.

If he is found guilty, the security guard suspected of the crime could face a fine of £395 and up to three months in prison or doing correctional labour according to some reports, but others say that he could be fined up to 74.9m roubles (£738,000) i.e the amount the painting was insured for, and up to one year of correctional labour (or up to three months in prison). 

The State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow saw a vandalism issue of its own on the 25th May 2018, when Igor Podporin, aged 37, and drunk on vodka caused over 500,000 roubles ($8,000) in damage to one of Russia’s most famous paintings, 'Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan' (1885) by Ilya Repin. 

Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan (1581)

Russia’s Interior Ministry said that Mr Podporin apparently burst into “the already empty I.E. Repin hall….and struck several blows with a metal security pole against the glassed canvas” of the painting. “The canvas has been torn in three spots in the central part of the work on the figure of the tsarevich,” although fortunately, according to the statement, “the most important part—the depiction of the faces and hands of the tsar and tsarevich—were not damaged.”

He allegedly objected to the painting’s content, which depicts Ivan the Terrible cradling his bloodied son, Tsarevich Ivan, after murdering him in 1581. Mr Podporin was imprisoned for two-and-a-half years.

In fact many Russian nationalists now believe that there is no evidence that Ivan the Terrible murdered his son, nor indeed that he was 'terrible'. President Putin said in 2017 that “we still don’t know whether he killed his son or not.” Both he and his then Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky have said that Ivan the Terrible was far from awful and was target of a negative PR campaign by Western powers of his day.

This is actually not the first time this picture has been attacked. It was vandalised back in 1913, by a mentally ill iconoclast. Ilya Repin was still alive at the time, and actually worked on its restoration himself.

Art criticism has a price, just like restoration, so it seems.