Putin bequeathed $2 billion collection of controversial art

What Nina Moleva gave the President

At the age of 98, the widow of avant-garde artist Elia Belyutina, Nina Moleva, died, who 11 years ago bequeathed the family collection to the state in the person of Vladimir Putin personally. She estimated the collection at $2 billion, allegedly containing works by Da Vinci, Velazquez, Titian, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Rubens, Tintoretto, Van Dyck, El Greco, ancient Greek statues, a table from the interior of Savva Morozov, furniture from Versailles, etc. .

There have been rumors about this meeting with a dubious reputation since Soviet times. Few people believe in the authenticity of the works. The fact, however, is that for decades the founder of the studio “New Reality” (the same one at whom Khrushchev furiously shouted at the Manege in 1962) and his wife, who at one time worked as an instructor on cultural issues in the CPSU Central Committee and wrote book “In the Garden of Times. 150 years of the Eliya Belyutin family collection,” lived among paintings that occupied every centimeter of the walls and even the ceiling.

In her book, Nina Moleva writes: “Laid down in the 1860s by the artist of the Office of the Imperial Theaters, entrepreneur I.E. Grinev, the collection is to this day replenished by his grandson, the Russian avant-garde painter Eliy Belyutin.” However, back in the 90s, expert Eric Turken said that the collection contained only “a dozen more or less interesting paintings.” The Pushkin Museum refused to accept the donation of paintings from Belyutin, stating that they “do not represent any historical or museum value.” Yuri Luzhkov also refused to accept the collection for the balance of Moscow and build a separate museum for it, as Moleva and her husband proposed.

Probably, now the Ministry of Culture will have to assemble an expert commission and assess whether there is anything valuable in the Belyutin-Moleva collection. And figure out what to do with it.