Confessions: Igor Mitukov
The former finance minister of the Ukraine offers investment tips for the post-Soviet art market (picture by Sebastian Meyer).
“I first became a collector of art in the late 80s, when I was working at Bank Ukraina – an old style Soviet agricultural bank – alongside our current president Viktor Yushchenko. I started to pay attention to art because a lot of our foreign banking associates would have nice paintings hanging on their walls; initially my interest was more a tribute to the professional manners of bankers than a desire to study art. Then the economic crisis started in Ukraine. A lot of art, especially traditional Ukrainian paintings, started to be transported from the Ukraine. And mostly they were being exported illegally. The market had suddenly opened up, there was a lot of poverty due to hyperinflation, and people were selling very unique national paintings for cheap, which were leaving the country by their hundreds. In Ukraine there are laws prohibiting the exports of antiques and art, but that wasn’t stopping anyone. So some of my friends and I, we decided to try and protect our history and our national heritage by simply buying almost everything suggested to us: all late 19th Century and early 20th Century Ukrainian art that was for sale. Not Aivazovsky – I’m not so rich as to buy Aivazovsky – but some famous Ukrainian’s: Kholodovsky, Svetoslavsky, Svetlitsky, and Makovsky, and other smaller artists of importance who Ukrainian’s were ignoring at the time, but whose paintings now sell for $50,000 USD.
At that time there were maybe one or two professional galleries performing auctions, so mainly we bought from private collectors, and we had a number of intermediaries – some of whom were artists themselves – who knew about private collections.
After you’ve bought maybe three or four paintings, information spreads very quickly that you’re a buyer: that you’re looking for art. We would travel around visiting one flat after another, collecting information. In that period most art came from the families of old scientists, doctors, musicians – the intelligentsia – who for many years had passed collections down through the family, and needed cash to survive. These people were selling a lot of paintings outside of auction. I bought around 20 paintings during the economic crisis, and the price I paid was usually around US $200-300.
Then all of a sudden I understood that Soviet realist art was becoming important and popular. Foreigners who were living in Kiev in the early 90s had already worked this out, and were tracking down great living artists and buying up their back catalogues – works painted in the 50s and 60s. For us locals this art was part of our old Soviet system – propaganda, slogans – something very simple and primitive. But I started to understand that, irrespective of what you see in a picture and the fact that artists throughout the Soviet period were forced to illustrate specific scenes of rural and industrial life, the technique is superb.
There was a very limited amount of things you were allowed to paint, but painters managed to, whilst describing formally pictures of Soviet life with simple and correct composition, expressing feelings in hidden ways. The early 90s was when I suddenly realised that these works would eventually be recognised as a vital, fascinating part of our heritage.
I buy much less now, because prices are going so high I can’t afford to compete. Paintings I bought back then sell at auction now for tens of thousands of pounds, and even most non-Ukrainians have stopped buying our art in the last three to four years because of the boom. 15 years ago say you could buy Piotr Stolerenko for a few hundred USD. Seven years ago you could buy Stolerenko for US $2000-3000. The last Stolerenko, sold in Germany earlier this year, fetched US $27,500. The economic progress of the last few years – with 7% growth – has made the number of potential buyers much bigger. There is a construction boom, there is a boom all around the country. If I could bring something back to Ukraine though, I’d probably buy some works by Sergei Shishko. 15 years ago I remember seeing his art up for sale in Japanese auction houses, and wondering how it ever got there. I’m sure a lot of the great works by him will never come back though; we just don’t know where they are. It happened that way with so much of our art. A number of great collections disappeared from national galleries in the early 90s, and it was rumoured that they were sent out as ‘exhibitions’ throughout Europe, and then they never came back.”
Posted by Daniel Stacey in Other | May 29, 2008 8:35AM |