In Yekaterinburg, the police opened a criminal case on vandalism (Part 1 of Article 214 of the Criminal Code) due to the fact that unknown people added eyes to abstract figures in the painting “Three Figures” by Malevich’s student Anna Leporskaya during an exhibition at the Yeltsin Center . This was announced to TASS by the head of the press service of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Sverdlovsk Region, Valery Gorelykh. >
Fragment of the painting «Three Figures» by Anna Leporskaya. Photo: The Art Newspaper Russia
“Currently, representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs are analyzing footage from CCTV cameras, interviewing possible eyewitnesses and witnesses of the incident,” he said.
In the middle January, the Ministry of Internal Affairs refused to initiate a case on damage to the painting (Article 167 of the Criminal Code) because of what happened. “There are no signs of a crime under Art. 167 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, since the picture has not lost its properties, ”the police said then.
The painting by Malevich’s student Anna Leporskaya “Three Figures”, written in the first half of the 20th century, was presented at an exhibition in Yeltsin -center». On December 7, visitors to the exhibition center discovered that unknown people had drawn eyes on the abstract figures in the painting with a ballpoint pen. After that, the work was removed from the exhibition ahead of schedule and returned to the Tretyakov Gallery, the restoration council of which estimated the damage at 250 thousand rubles.