Masterpieces Sparking a New Art Cold War ; These Are Among the Great Pictures That Have Never Been Seen Before in London but Russia's Fears of Legal Action Could Still Jeopardise the Royal Academy Exhibition

Evening Standard - London › November 12, 2007

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Summary

ARRIVING in Britain for the first time are 20th century French masterpieces from the Hermitage in St Petersburg and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and outstanding Russian pictures from the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the Russian Museum in St Petersburg.

This artistic banquet is not the only arrival. London may also be treated to a feast of diplomatic trouble, legal actions, new chapters in the Cold War and a slanging match between the UK and Russia about art and stolen goods.

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Extract

Masterpieces Sparking a New Art Cold War ; These Are Among the Great Pictures That Have Never Been Seen Before in London but Russia's Fears of Legal Action Could Still Jeopardise the Royal Academy Exhibition

"Art is the last unfinished business of World War II," I once declared to Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage. He replied with heavy irony: "If only that were true." The splendours coming to the Royal Academy from mid-January to April raise issues that go back far before 1945. They arise from World War I and the 1917 Russian Revolution and from the seizures in the 1920s of Russia's private art collections by Lenin, Stalin, Mikoyan an...

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