15th January 2026
Chris Aslan
Despite the flourishing of Russian Avant-Garde Art during the first 30 years of the 20th Century, as Stalin rose to power, he banned all but Socialist Realist expressions of art. To own anything else was dangerous enough but to start collecting it was unthinkable. And yet this is what Igor Savitsky did. He travelled throughout the Soviet Union, buying, bribing and cajoling until he’d amassed the second largest collection of Russian Avant-Garde art in the world. The State Museum of Karakalpakstan, situated near the south shores of the Aral Sea is now a Mecca for art lovers. Its remote location in the desert oasis of Khorezm, meant that Savitsky was able to get away with such subversive activity, because even the authorities in Moscow were a little hazy as to where exactly Karakalpakstan was. Savitsky promoted Russian artists sent to Central Asia in exile and the works of the first Central Asian artists to paint their own people and landscapes.
