Art Collectors of Russia: The Private Treasures Revealed

With the fall of Tsarism in 1917, all the assets and possessions of the royal family and the aristocracy were confiscated. Many were displayed in public museums. The revolution made it illegal for anyone other than members of the Communist Party to possess works of art or antiquities. But, following on from a long and rich tradition that began in the 18th century there were those who continued to collect treasures in the face of the ban. They stashed the artefacts away, transforming their apartments into highly decorative and glittering treasure troves. Apart from the three big twentieth-century collections - those of Chtoukine, Morozov and Kostakis - which are today located in the museums of St Petersburg and Moscow, there are ten other major private collections presented in this book. Previously unpublished and photographed for the first time, the mysterious collections include Western painting, Russian 20th-century painting, furniture and oriental objets d'art. This book introduces us to these fascinating interiors and recounts the turbulent and moving histories of the collectors themselves. The book has been written with the collaboration of Agnes Carbonell.