![]() He would take a train to Moscow which took three days and charm the families of the painters they would bring down works stuffed in attics. Savitsky realised he could rescue these works. Formalism, as it was called, was punishable. Any other styles of the time – the emerging cubism, futurism, even impressionism – were deemed criminal. ![]() The work collected is of both Russian and Uzbek artists who painted after the 30s, when all work that wasn’t socialist realism was banned by Stalin. Some of these painters were tortured or murdered or spent long years in the gulags. Savitsky risked everything for this collection. Then you start to understand what you are seeing, and it’s mind-blowing. The art is everywhere – stacked up in some places against the wall as rain comes in through a leaking roof. Inside, I approach an elaborate staircase and am welcomed by a charming guide. Photograph: Chip Hires/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images As you step over puddles along mud tracks towards a bleak square where the museum stands, everything feels deserted and half dead.Įlectrician turned gallerist … Igor Savitsky in the 1950s. But while the collection may be impressive – Volkov, Kurzin and Lysenko all feature – it’s hard to imagine this place being able to compete with the world’s big collections. The remoteness of the region allowed him to show and buy paintings that had been banned – the authorities simply had no idea what he was up to. Eventually he established a museum in 1966. Because he was so far from Moscow (and the other centre of power, Tashkent) he was able to amass a huge collection of dissident avant garde art. Igor Savitsky, a former electrician born into a rich Russian family, came to this area on an archaeological dig around 1950 and started collecting local artefacts, textiles and jewellery. The Nukus Museum of Art might be as close to the middle of nowhere as I have ever been, but it’s still one of the country’s top draws thanks to its Savitsky Collection, which exists precisely because it’s so far from anywhere else. Uzbekistan is opening up and has lifted visa restrictions in a bid to bring tourists flocking to the Silk Road cities that we’ve seen Joanna Lumley ooh and aah over. Still, I am here for the art, invited by the Ministry of Culture. Smuggled out of Russia … Constructive composition, 1919, by Georgy Echeistov. Toxic dust blows through the area – there are high rates of infant mortality and cancer. There’s a horribly photogenic landscape of rusting boats on a dried-up seabed that looks like a lunar surface. The Aral Sea, once the fourth largest inland sea, has shrunk because of Soviet irrigation systems and chemicals pumped into the water. It seems the only other reason people venture there is for a spot of “disaster tourism”. En route, I blearily note that even the guidebooks can find little to say about this “unappealing city”. The next day, at a godawful hour, I get up to fly to Nukus in northern Uzbekistan, where this “museum of forbidden art” is located. What an amazing job, I think – raising the profile of a museum that could turn out to be the Louvre of central Asia.īut the dream job may not be quite so dreamy. ![]() There’s currently an international call-out to find someone to run a gallery in the country, one housing the world’s second-largest collection of Russian avant garde art. I am sitting at a huge table at the Ministry of Culture in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, as officials explain what sounds like a wonderful opportunity.
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