The Investigative Committee of the Russia has launched a criminal case over the creation and sale of works by Ernst Neizvestny

The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has launched a criminal case over the creation and sale of counterfeit works by the famous nonconformist sculptor Ernst Neizvestny. The fraud incident is directly linked to a large-scale exhibition titled “The Era of the Unknown,” which opened at the Tretyakov Gallery in the autumn of last year to mark the artist’s centenary. The exhibition closed on May 12 of this year, just a few months before the tenth anniversary of the sculptor’s death.

During the investigation, it was discovered that among the one hundred and fifty works displayed at the leading national museum were copies that violated authenticity standards. Specifically, these were sculptures that had been newly cast using the original molds but were presented to the public and potential buyers as rare vintage pieces created many years ago.

As part of the inquiry, law enforcement has already made an arrest. The suspect is an active officer of a Russian law enforcement agency, whose identity is being withheld for investigative reasons. According to the investigation, early in the 2020s this individual organized a full-scale illegal business dedicated to producing and selling fake works by Ernst Neizvestny. Some of these objects ended up at the Tretyakov Gallery exhibition. To date, the case file includes evidence regarding thirty counterfeit sculptures that were sold to a well-known collector. The total damages inflicted on him exceed 30 million rubles.

Two prominent figures in the art world are listed as witnesses in this case: Lyubov Agafonova, founder of the Vellum Gallery, and Roza Verkhovina, general director of the auction house “First Names.”

It is worth noting that the curator of the controversial exhibition was not a staff member of the Tretyakov Gallery but an outside expert, art historian Elena Gribonosova-Grebneva. She holds a PhD in art history, is a researcher at the Department of History of Russian Art at the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, and serves as the general director of the all-Russian public organization “Association of Art Critics.”