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Witness History: The museum of banned Russian art

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25/05/2022 GMT

The museum of banned Russian art

BBC World Service - Witness History, The museum of banned Russian art

How Igor Savitsky saved thousands of works from Stalin's censors, and started a museum

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.

In 1966, 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, is now recognised as one of the greatest collections of Russian avant-garde art in the world. In 2016, Louise Hidalgo spoke 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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