Russian guard sentenced after doodling eyes on exhibit painting
A Russian security guard has been found guilty of vandalism after doodling eyes on an abstract painting by avant-garde artist Anna Leporskaya last December.
According to the Art Newspaper, he must serve 180 hours of “compulsory labour” and undergo “psychiatric evaluation”.
The painting, titled Three Figures (1932–34), was on loan to the Yeltsin Centre from Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery and valued at 75 million rubles (US$1.2 million).
News of the vandalism broke when visitors alerted gallery staff of two crude eyes drawn on the painting’s faceless figures in a ballpoint pen.
A police investigation revealed the culprit was 64-year-old Aleksandr Vasiliev, a security guard employed by a private company who was on his first day on the job.
After the damage was deemed “insignificant”, it was restored and has since been returned to the Tretyakov Gallery.
Vasiliev’s lawyer, Aleskei Bushmakov, shared a letter on his Facebook page that he sent to Zelfira Tregulova, the general director of the Tretyakov Gallery.
He wrote that “taking into account the circumstances of the criminal case, the damage inflicted to the painting Three Figures” and “the high level of public attention in connection with the incident,” the museum considered closing the case “via reconciliation” but ultimately decided that it “does not regard it as possible to take such an appeal to the magistrate.”
In an interview with Russian news site E1, Vasiliev said he believed the 20th-century work by Leporskaya was a “children’s drawing” and claimed he was goaded by teenagers to deface it.
“I’m a fool, what have I done,” he said.
Image credits: State Tretyakov Gallery / The Art Newspaper Russia