The museum of banned Russian art
How Igor Savitsky saved thousands of works from Stalin's censors, and started a museum
Witness History · BBC World Service
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Show Notes
In 1966, a Russian painter and archaeologist, Igor Savitsky, created a museum in the remote desert of Uzbekistan, where he stored tens of thousands of works of art that he had saved from Stalin's censors. The Savitsky museum, in Nukus, is now recognised as one of the greatest collections of Russian avant-garde art in the world. In 2016, Louise Hidalgo spoke to the son and grandson of one of the artists, Alexander Volkov, whose work Savitsky saved.
(Photo:the Karakalpak Museum of Art, home of the Savitsky art collection. Credit: Chip HIRES/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)