Painting by Aivazovsky stolen from Ukraine appears on auction in Russia

Ivan Aivazovsky's painting Lunar Night is being auctioned in Russia. At the start of the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014, it was illegally transferred to the Simferopol Art Museum alongside over fifty other paintings.

The Russians' plans to auction Aivazovsky's painting were announced by Gunduz Mammadov, ex-deputy of the Prosecutor General and former prosecutor of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, on Twitter (X).

He recalled that in 2017, Interpol added 52 paintings transferred to the occupied Crimea to the international wanted list at the request of the Crimean Prosecutor's Office.

"In this way, the Russian Federation openly disregards international law, because according to the UNESCO Convention of 1970, the export of cultural property and the transfer of property rights are prohibited," Mammadov emphasised.

The Russian media reported that Lunar Night will be the main lot in the auction, which is to  take place  at the Moscow Auction House on 18 February. They note that the painting is estimated to be worth RUB 100 million (about US$1.09 million) prior to sale.

Screenshot: Moscow Auction House website

In addition to Aivazovsky's work, 123 works by artists from the 18th to 20th centuries will be offered for sale. They include six works by Ilya Repin, as well as works by Isaac Levitan, Vasily Vereshchagin, Nikolai Roerich, and others.

According to Russian media, the auction will be held in the same manner as Christie's and Sotheby's (which have refused putting Russian lots for auction), and the website will allow visitors to "fill out a form for the export of art objects from Russia."

How Russia stole Lunar Night

On 18 February 2014, the Simferopol Art Museum and the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore signed an agreement to display paintings as part of the "Russian and Ukrainian Art of the 18th – Early 20th Centuries" exhibition. On the same day, 52 paintings from the Ukrainian Museum Fund arrived in Mariupol from Crimea. Among them were Lunar Night by Ivan Aivazovsky; Road in the Forest by Ivan Shishkin; Landscape.Evening by Alexei Savrasov; Swamp by Isaac Levitan, and others.

Lunar Night by Ivan Aivazovsky

The exhibition in Mariupol was scheduled to run until 31 May 2014, but it was closed earlier because the Simferopol Museum's management demanded that the paintings be returned to the already-occupied Crimea. On 19 March 2014, Mariupol Museum workers received a letter from the director of the Simferopol Art Museum.

In response, the-then director of the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore, Olha Chaplynska, unilaterally terminated the agreement for the exhibition of Crimean paintings. On 20 March, Natalia Kuronysheva, head of the funds department at the Kuindzhi Art Museum, handed over 52 exhibited paintings to the envoy.

Employees of the Mariupol Museum who gave the paintings to the Russians

In August 2017, Radio Liberty reported, citing Russian media, that a group of retired military men from Crimea stole and delivered paintings from the Mariupol Museum to the occupied peninsula.

On 17 August 2017, the Ukrainian Prosecutor's Office in Crimea announced that 50 paintings had been added to the wanted list via Interpol channels after being illegally transferred to the Simferopol Art Museum in March 2014.

Interpol recognised the paintings as "stolen"

Chaplynska and Kuronysheva were notified of suspicion in September 2017. They faced seven and twelve-year prison sentences. However, in February 2018, the court sentenced both women to three years in prison, with one year of deprivation of the right to hold positions related to the performance of organisational, administrative, and economic duties. Furthermore, by enacting the amnesty law, the court absolved them of their prescribed punishment.

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