Soviet Union

Fears grow for Georgian museum created to salute purged writers after director sacked

The Museum of Repressed Writers in Tbilisi was created to remember the creatives who were silenced by the Soviet Union. But, after months of political tension, the future of the museum hangs in the balance

New exhibition in Tbilisi shines light on Georgian artist shunned by Soviet Union

Levan Chogoshvili's first large-scale solo show in the country will take place at the Atinati Cultural Center

Leaderscomment

Now is the time to honour not censor Russia’s dissident artists

The director of the Zimmerli Art Museum, which is home to the world's foremost collection of Soviet nonconformist art, says recent calls to censor all Russian art in light of the war in Ukraine oversimplify the issue

Booksreview

Book reveals the perilous life and times of Stalin’s most celebrated architect

Boris Iofan, a Jewish architect born in Odesa—whose buildings included the Communist behemoth the “House on the Embankment”—built what the dictator demanded, creating architecture as an instrument of power

"Painting the Absolute": Four volumes on Kazimir Malevich, the pioneering painter-priest of abstraction

Andréi Nakov, a leading expert on Malevich, has produced a large-scale study of the Russian avant-garde's art and life

Berlin and Warsaw team up to preserve socialist heritage

Though reconstruction efforts after the devastation of war differed wildly between the two cities, the dialogue will be vital to conservation efforts

Newsarchive

Foreign minister calls for Warsaw’s Palace of Culture to be demolished

Sikorski says that it would be better to have a park in its place

Stedelijk returns five Malevich works to artist’s heirs

Museum retains 79 works on long-term loan from the City of Amsterdam

Peter Doigarchive

News from London: Peter Doig the family man, Lucian Freud the party animal

Meanwhile, Mark McGowan gets a helping hand on his commute while Richard Wentworth loses his marbles

Recent developments in restitution claims in Russia prove that some art theft is 'legitimate'; when it is committed by a government that is recognised by nations around the world

Unlike the heirs of Nazi victims, the descendants of collectors whose art was appropriated by the Bolsheviks are unlikely to have it returned

Claim for slice of the action at LACMA as new show uses paintings subject to restitution claims

A French plaintiff says he deserves a percentage of exhibition ticket sales at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art because the works on display were taken from his grandfather after the Russian Revolution

A failing Russian bank exposes a climate of fear and suspicion over ownership of Malevich’s “Black Square”

The painting is currently with Russia's Culture Ministry, though Malevich's heirs dispute the bank's original ownership

Mark Stephens on new UK anti-seizure law: “The actions of the British government and the Royal Academy are morally reprehensible”

A lawyer’s comment on the RA's 'From Russia' exhibition and the laws that were pushed through to protect it

Looted artarchive

Further cultural valuables to be returned to Germany

A medieval stained-glass window to return to Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, while Germany will pay for the rebuilding of a 14th-century church in the Pskov region

Booksarchive

Books: Stalin’s supermuseum

As the Red Army pushed back the Nazi invaders in 1944, a pair of Soviet art historians compiled a list of masterpieces from Europe’s museums to be brought back to Moscow

Hitler, the prince and the Dürers: The complex story of Lviv's looted Old Master works

After a long, strange journey, the Lubomirski Museum Dürers are now subject to restitutions claims by both Poland and the Ukraine

Conservator on conflict with Russian Orthodox Church: "We saved Church art"

Negotiating the restitution of religious art is important, but it should not be at the expense of the institutions protecting Russia's cultural heritage

Rozhdestwjenski exhibition, to be shown at Gmurzynska, just one of many Eastern European artists promoted and placed in Western museums by the Gmurzynska family

Exhibition, “Under the Sign of the Red Cross”, showing works by Rozhdestwjenski, disciple of Suprematist founder Malévich, is one of many before "Premierentage"

Collectorsarchive

George Costakis' dramatic tale of collecting the Avant-Garde in the Soviet Union: His own words

Some of his most prized works are now on show in the New York Guggenheim exhibition “The Great Utopia: the Russian and Soviet Avant-garde 1915-32”

Restitution in Poland: Count recovers Leonardo’s “Lady with the Ermine” from the Communists and donates it to a foundation

Czartoryski Museum and Library converted into foundation with advice from London art dealer, Andrew Ciechanowiecki

Correcting Malévich’s own disinformation

Conference papers of the 1988-89 touring exhibition are scutinised

Lootingarchive

Looted art publicly acknowledged by Soviet Minister of Culture

A commission will be set up at Gorbachev’s behest to look into cultural property removed to U.S.S.R.

Newsarchive

Official Soviet circles consider the return to the West of World War II art treasures

Glasnost has unveiled the ill kept secret of thousands of works of art, of archives and libraries taken to the USSR

French and Russians come together over Malevich in cooperative workshops and lectures, entitled "Playing Malevich"

The group of Lille and Soviet artists, designers, and architects will collaborate to produce an original culture park

Penalties for defacing monuments to Communism are being debated in the Soviet parliament

Are these acts a citizens’ protest against the situation in which the country now finds itself, or are they merely vandalism?

Work of the revolutionary Russian artist Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935) is currently showing in Los Angeles, then coming to New York

The exhibition draws works from galleries and museums across the globe to display a chronological retrospective