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Witness History: Russia's Forbidden Art

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12/01/2016 GMT

Russia's Forbidden Art

BBC World Service - Witness History, Russia's Forbidden Art

The Russian painter who created a world-famous collection of forbidden Soviet art

The story of Igor Savitsky who saved tens of thousands of works of art from Stalin's censors, and created one of the greatest collections of avant-garde art in the world

Fifty years ago, a Russian painter and archaeologist, Igor Savitsky, created a museum in the remote desert of Uzbekistan, where he stored tens of thousands of works of art that he had saved from Stalin's censors. The Savitsky museum, in Nukus, would come to be recognised as one of the greatest collections of Russian avant-garde art in the world. Witness talks to the son and grandson of one of the artists, Alexander Volkov, whose work Savitsky saved. 

(Photo:the Karakalpak Museum of Art, home of  the Savitsky art collection. Credit: Chip HIRES/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

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