The works of Ukrainian and Eastern European avant-garde artists from the “Leonid Zaks collection” turned out to be fakes, although some of them have been praised by art experts
In the mid-2000s, a large-scale private collection of Ukrainian and Russian avant-garde art, numbering hundreds of works of art, appeared in Europe. It included works by such artists as Lysytskyi, Rodchenko, Exter, Goncharova, and others.
This collection was called the Sachs Collection in honor of its owner, and works from it were sold in Europe for hundreds of thousands of Swiss francs.
Today, some of the works from this collection are represented in two leading museums in the United States and one in Europe. One of the paintings has even appeared in contemporary Hollywood films, including Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.
However, experts have expressed doubts about the authenticity of these works, suggesting that the history of the collection may be a fiction full of myths and fantasies.
While three art detectives investigate the mysterious history of this “lost grail” of the Ukrainian and Russian avant-garde, BBC journalists Grigor Atanesyan, Tatiana Preobrazhenskaya and Tatiana Yanutsevich try to find the mysterious owner of the collection and those who facilitated the sale of the questionable works.
Sachs claimed that his collection included more than 200 avant-garde paintings
In the early 2000s, an unknown private collector appeared in Minsk with a sensational statement: he had found a large collection of Ukrainian and Russian avant-garde paintings and intended to exhibit them in Belarus.
The collection consisted of over two hundred paintings, including works by Lazar “Al” Lysytskyi, Oleksandr Rodchenko, Volodymyr Tatlin, Ilya Chashnyk, Natalia Honcharova, Lyubov Popova, Oleksandra Ekster, Ivan Klyun, Robert Falk, and other prominent artists.
The mysterious owner of the collection was a Soviet emigrant Leonid Zaks, a citizen of Israel at the time. He claimed that his relatives had assembled this unique collection. According to him, they received some of the works as gifts from Belarusian peasants, and the rest were purchased in Moscow or Minsk thrift stores in the 1950s.
At first, there were exhibitions in Belarus
Belarusian cultural officials have been enthusiastic about the story, organizing several exhibitions that have attracted public attention.
However, art historians began to doubt the veracity of this legend. They were alarmed by several facts:
- Zaks carefully avoided cooperation with the National Art Museum of Belarus.
- His interviews contained historical inaccuracies.
- The quality of the paintings themselves raised serious questions.
Over time, the dubious history of Zaks’s collection has become an object of detailed research and controversy in the art world.
Vitebsk historian exposes the hoax
Vitebsk historian Alexander Lisov has drawn attention to a serious hoax related to the Zaks collection. The catalog of one of the Belarusian exhibitions stated that the authenticity of the paintings was confirmed by “N. Selezneva”, an employee of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. However, it turned out that there was no such employee at the museum.
After this incident, the exhibitions of the Zaks collection in Belarus stopped, and the article about it was removed from Wikipedia.
Exhibitions in Switzerland and sale of paintings
However, this scandal did not stop Leonid Zaks, but only changed his strategy. The collector moved his activities to the international arena. Exhibitions of the collection continued in the private Swiss gallery Orlando, located in Zurich.
From 2007 to 2014, the gallery hosted at least five major exhibitions dedicated to the Sachs collection. As the gallery was a commercial one, all the paintings on display were available for purchase.
Most of the works from the collection were sold to private buyers, sometimes at prices reaching hundreds of thousands of Swiss francs. In some cases, such acquisitions led to unexpected consequences. For one family, the purchase of paintings from the Sachs collection caused serious family drama.
Art for the blind
In 2005, when Rudolf Blum, a legendary Zurich collector, lost his sight, his wife Leonore took over his business. She began to actively buy works of art through the Orlando Gallery in Zurich, headed by her friend Suzanne Orlando. In a few years, Leonore Blum acquired dozens of paintings worth millions of Swiss francs.
Among these works were paintings by leading avant-garde artists: Lysitsky, Rodchenko, Popova, Tatlin, and Exter.
“My mother wanted to prove that she understood painting as well as my father, and she trusted Suzanne Orlando,” says Beatrice Gimpel McNally, the Blums’ daughter. “My father began to suspect something was wrong, but what could he do?
By that time, Leonor had already been diagnosed with vascular dementia. When Beatrice tried to share her doubts, her mother reacted with insult.
The paintings purchased from the Orlando gallery caused a rift in their relationship.
Disappointment
Eventually, Beatrice’s suspicions were justified. After her parents’ death, heritage appraisers declared that the works from the Sachs collection had no value. London auction houses refused to take them for consideration.
One of the auction representatives recommended that Beatrice contact James Butterwick, a British dealer and renowned expert on the Ukrainian and Russian avant-garde.
“Derussification” of the avant-garde
Previously, the term “Russian avant-garde” was used to describe the works of artists created in the first quarter of the twentieth century on the territory of the former Soviet Union. This category included such movements as Suprematism, Constructivism, Rayism, and Cubist Futurism. Today, however, this term is considered inappropriate because it reflects an imperialist and colonial approach. Instead, alternatives such as “Ukrainian avant-garde” or “Soviet avant-garde” are increasingly being used.
In 2022, after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the word “Russian” disappeared from the name of the James Butterwick Gallery. Now the gallery is dedicated to “Ukrainian and European art.”
Fascination with the avant-garde and challenges of authenticity
Butterwick’s interest in avant-garde art emerged after a student exchange in the USSR, after which he lived in Moscow for some time. In the 1990s, with the transition to a market economy, the art market, which had previously existed in the shadows, was flooded with new works. However, many of them turned out to be fakes. It was a period when authenticity often gave way to uncritical acceptance of works of dubious origin.
In the 2000s, the situation changed when Russian capital began to actively enter the Western market. In December 2004, over a thousand works by Russian and Ukrainian artists were presented at London auctions, mostly bought by Russian collectors.
In 2008, during the global economic crisis, Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition was sold at auction in New York for a record $60 million. Ten years later, the same work reached a price of 86 million. The rise in prices for avant-garde art stimulated the emergence of an industry for creating fakes and falsified collections.
Doubtful collections and police raids
Over time, police in Europe began to discover warehouses filled with hundreds and sometimes thousands of works of unknown origin. Butterwick also noticed that more and more clients were bringing him paintings that were questionable in terms of authenticity, accompanied by pseudo-scientific conclusions from “experts.”
Among these works were the paintings shown to him by Beatrice, the daughter of Rudolf and Leonore Blum.
The investigation
James Butterwick decided to investigate the story together with Ukrainian art historian and curator Kostiantyn Akinsha and St. Petersburg collector Andriy Vasiliev.
Akinsha, a specialist in provenance, the history of the origin of works of art, offered to look into the incredible history of the collection, which was probably built on myths and forgeries.
“Work on fakes”
According to Leonid Zaks, the foundation of the collection was laid by his grandfather Zalman, a merchant from what was then Katerynoslav (now Dnipro). Legend has it that Zalman became interested in radical art after seeing avant-garde works in a Belgian bank in Katerynoslav. Under the influence of this impression, he began to buy paintings.
The collection was expanded by Anna (Nehama) Zaks, Zalman’s daughter, who worked as a military nurse. In 1944-1945, during her service, she treated Belarusian peasants, who, wanting to thank her, brought her works by Lysytsky and Exter.
The last contribution to the collection, according to legend, was made by Anna’s brother, Moses. He disappeared during the war in 1941, but, according to family legend, reappeared in Moscow in the 1950s as an American businessman.
At that time, avant-garde art was condemned as “formalist” and was massively sold in thrift stores. Moses allegedly bought dozens of such masterpieces in 1955-1956 and transported them to Europe. The works remained there until the 1990s, when they were inherited by Leonid Zaks, an oilman from Moscow. It was he who told these incredible stories about his ancestors and their contribution to the collection.
As a confirmation of the veracity of his story, Leonid Zaks provided buyers with a letter from the National Museum of History and Culture of Belarus dated 2008. The document detailed the entire history of the collection, but it contained numerous contradictions, errors, and misprints.
When Andrei Vasiliev made an official request to the museum, he was told that no such letter had been found in the institution’s archives.
“This means that by all indications this document is a forgery,” the collector concludes.
But the art detectives did not stop there. They conducted a thorough research in Russian and Belarusian archives, sent dozens of requests to museums, and checked all the key facts related to the history of the collection.
“We have examined the entire provenance of the Zaks collection, and not a single element of it is documented. On the contrary, we were able to refute every single one of them. We are looking at a typical provenance myth,” says art historian Konstantin Akinsha.
In museums and Hollywood movies
Two works from the Sachs collection are housed at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. One of them was attributed to the Ukrainian artist Oleksandra Ekster, and the author of the second, titled “Clockmaker,” was considered to be Ivan Klun.
The Clockmaker appeared in two films in 2023: “Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan and The Remarkable Story of Henry Sugar by Wes Anderson.
After the BBC informed the Minneapolis Institute of Arts about the dubious spending of the Zaks collection, the museum said it would conduct its own investigation.
Soon after, the painting was removed from the exhibition, and its description on the official website of the institute changed. Now it is listed as “attributed to Ivan Klyun”.
Another work from the Sachs collection, attributed to Alexandra Exter, is kept at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The museum curators were interested in the results of the BBC investigation, but refrained from commenting.
We also found that another painting from this collection, titled “Genoa” and attributed to Alexandra Exter, is in the Albertina Gallery in Vienna. Representatives of the museum told the BBC that they had already checked this work. The painting is not currently on display.
A flat-screen TV in an 18th-century interior.
We delivered them from Zurich to the Art Discovery Laboratory in London, where Gillian Nadolny, a leading expert in the field of technical and technological analysis of painting, known for exposing dozens of fakes of the “Russian” avant-garde, took up the analysis.
Her research revealed that the paint on the painting by Lysitsky, who died in 1941, contained fibers treated with substances that became widely available only after World War II.
“It’s like seeing a flat-screen TV in an 18th-century painting. It is absolutely impossible,” Nadolny commented.
She concluded that the painting was a fake. The same result was obtained for the work attributed to Lyubov Popova.
The BBC also managed to find people who helped Zaks build a reputation for his collection, including the authors of articles that the Orlando gallery used to convince buyers of the authenticity of the works.
Anton Ouspensky, a leading researcher at the Russian Museum, is the only living art historian who has spoken positively about the Zaks collection. He has published three articles about it, including in authoritative publications.
However, in an interview with the BBC, Ouspensky admitted that he took the information about the collection from Zaks’s words and did not verify its authenticity: “These are family legends that are not recorded or confirmed anywhere.” He also stated that he did not confirm the authenticity of the paintings and had never even seen them in person, only photographs. According to him, he did not know that his name was used to sell the works.
In his articles, Ouspensky claimed that another Prone by Lysytsky from the Sachs collection had been acquired by the Basel Art Museum. However, this information turned out to be false.
“Thorough research of our archives has not revealed any trace of the Sachs family or their works,” the head of the pro bono research department at the Basel Museum told the BBC.
Tatyana Kotovich, an art historian from Vitebsk, also wrote a lot of positive materials about the Zaks collection.
“This is news to me. I did not know that my name was used in this way. I have never claimed to guarantee the authenticity of these works,” Kotovich said in response to a BBC inquiry.
In her texts, she wrote that “Zaks cooperates with the most famous experts,” among whom she named members of the InCoRM association, which issued certificates for many of the works from the collection that were sold in the Orlando gallery.
However, InCoRM was involved in two high-profile scandals after its certificates became evidence in lawsuits over the forgery of avant-garde art in Germany and Belgium.
Patricia Reiling, the founder and president of InCoRM, told the BBC that the organization ceased to exist due to the numerous allegations: “Nobody wanted to work with us anymore after all these attacks and accusations of forgeries.”
“Who should I believe – unknown people or my mother?”
Only two weeks before the publication of our investigation, he contacted us and unexpectedly agreed to a telephone interview.
We asked him about the part of the collection that he did not manage to sell and where it is now. Sachs evaded a direct answer: “I would like to avoid this question, as well as others related to price and other aspects. The collection is stored in a European warehouse.”
He refused to take responsibility for the paintings sold on the European market: “I had nothing to do with these paintings once they left the Orlando gallery. These questions are not for me to ask!”
Each time he repeated: “I didn’t sell anything.”
We also asked him about the provenance of the collection and how he could confirm the stories about peasants who allegedly gave away modernist masterpieces in 1944-1945. To this, Sachs replied: “What evidence? Do you have any idea what happened there after the war?”
In response to the expert opinions, he noted that the history of the collection was written down by his mother, “an honest person,” and added: “Who should I believe – unknown people or my mother?”
Sachs was also surprised by the sums Beatrice’s parents paid for works from his collection. He assured them that his works could not have been worth hundreds of thousands of Swiss francs, calling these sums “delirium.” “I’ve never seen that kind of money from an Orlando gallery,” he said.
He was also offended by the fact that Anton Uspensky told the BBC that he had not seen the paintings and had not participated in their sale. “Ouspensky has been to the Orlando gallery many times. He knew how it worked and saw that it was a commercial gallery, similar to a store,” Zaks argued.
At the end of the conversation, we asked him if he wanted to apologize to Beatrice. “I can’t apologize, but I can sympathize. There is nothing to apologize for,” he replied.
“A wave of fakes has flooded the world”
Deceived collectors rarely evoke sympathy, because they are mostly rich people with extra money. However, in the case of Malevich, Lysytsky, Exter, Popova, Goncharova and other avant-garde artists, it is no longer just a matter of private losses, but a threat to their entire heritage.
“There are much more fakes than genuine works,” says Andriy Vasyliev.
The story of the Sachs collection demonstrates how dubious paintings with fictional stories can end up in the world’s leading museums. There, they become accessible to hundreds of thousands of people, end up in textbooks, and form a new generation of art historians.
The dominance of fakes forced Akinsha, Vasiliev, and Butterwick to fight against fakes. But even they sometimes despair and assume that the outcome of this struggle is already known.
“Thanks to the many art historians who consider themselves academic scholars, while willingly issuing certificates to authenticate dubious works, the avant-garde has become a vast room of crooked mirrors filled with frightening twins,” Akinsha wrote in his article.
Although the art of the radical experimenters of that era-Ukrainian, Russian, and Jewish artists-was able to survive Soviet persecution, World War II, and the Iron Curtain, decades of market boom and a wave of fakes may bury their legacy under mountains of bad copies.