To survive the art: Private art collecting tanks in the USSR

Dr. Waltraud Bavarian creates a differentiated picture more privately art collecting tank inside in the former Soviet Union (avant-garde collecting tank Georgij Costakis. Admission: Igor' Pal' min 1973, archives of the museum for contemporary art, Slg. Costakis, Thessalonik (openPR) - those internationally first overall display of private art collections in the USSR comes from Austria and as book was published now. To basis from so far majority unpublished material in one points how the long repressierte private collecting tank municipality “survived” the Soviet time - and so cultural inheritance secured. The book became possible by intensive research in the context of a Hertha Firnberg place, which was financed by the science fund FWF. The work draws thereby not only a comprehensive picture of private art collecting tank inside in the former Soviet Union, but clears up at the same time with usual myths.


The Russian revolution in the year 1917 brought a prohibition of private property with itself, whereby also private art possession was nearly without exception forbidden. But not all art collecting tank inside could be deterred and found ways to escape a pursuit. A book published now documents these ways due to founded scientific vouchers for the first time comprehensively.

The result is an internationally singular representation of the development and characteristics of the private collecting market in the Soviet Union, a market, which did not exist officially. Under the title “saved culture: , 1917-1991” Dr. Waltraud Bavarian of the University of Graz, Institut for history, the situation from the revolution to the Perestrojka describes private art collecting tanks in the Soviet Union. It shows highly detailed, which concrete conditions had to fulfill Soviet citizens, in order to be able to accumulate art.

Protection documents
The majority belonged of the intellectual layer the art collecting tank inside on. Above all the former education middle class and the aristocracy continued to collect against common acceptance at first under most adverse conditions. Only starting from the 1930er years they were replaced from a new social layer, as Dr. Bayer implements: “The prototype of the Soviet art collecting tank was the well trained Wissenschafter or culture-creative, that over the necessary know-how, the relevant contacts to intermediaries and party bureaucracy, sufficiently financial means and plentifully time ordered.”

Due to new realizations the book clears up also with the myth of a constant confrontation between private collecting tank municipality and state apparatus. Rather the source material shows that the two contractors were repeated ready for co-operation: The few remaining art collecting tank inside cooperated often with the Soviet regime, remained, and received protection documents” with political good behavior “.

Saved culture
Were collected above all those art objects, which applied in the eyes of the official cultural policy as “garbage” and were tabuisiert of this. Thus the collecting tank municipality proved to Dr. Bayer as a rescuer of cultural heritage, thus: “In the coordinated system of the Soviet Union the private collections an important corrective represented to the official art understanding, since this excluded many cultural currents. The collections retained thereby not only valuable pieces from modern trend, avant-garde and icon painting, but also the historical memory.”

This merit/service that art collecting tank inside with the Perestrojka was finally also appreciated. The public acknowledgment hidden works of art led before to a boom at exhibitions. Native ones collecting tank inside, at Soviet times particularly by cultural specialized knowledge and good contacts profited, could use these new conditions however not for a long time. Because after paging high financial means became ever more important - pretty often a new economic elite took over whole collections of their predecessor inside.

Only aufwändige searches in national like private archives, libraries, collections and museums in the context of a Hertha Firnberg place - a program of the FWFs for the promotion from women to beginning of their scientific career - made these realizations possible. One investigated thereby for the first time not only in the cultural centers Moscow and pc. Petersburg, but also in many other parts of the former USSR. The inclusion of concrete individual cases on basis of 100 Kurzbiographien and interviews is in addition, singular. Due to these investigations going into the depth and the new realizations the book represents now a high measuring pole for future publications.

Picture and text starting from Monday, 18 December 2006, 09,00 o'clock MEZ available under: www.fwf.ac.at/de/public_relations/press/pv200612-de.html

Waltraud Bavarian, saved culture: Private art collecting tanks in the Soviet Union, 1917-1991. Turia + Kant, Vienna 2006, ISBN 978-3-85132-463-1

Further information: www.waltraudbayer.at

Scientific contact:
Dr. Waltraud Bavarian
University of Graz
Institut for history
Mozart lane 3
8010 Graz
T +43/676/6022601
E waltraud.bayer@aon.at (waltraud.bayer@uni-graz.at)

The science fund FWF:
Likes. Stefan Bernhardt
House of the research
Scythe lane 1
1090 Vienna
T +43/1/505 67 40 - 8111
E stefan.bernhardt@fwf.ac.at

Editorship & sending:
PR&D - Public relation for Research & development
Campus Vienna bio center 2
1030 Vienna
T +43/1/505 70 44
E contact@prd.at

Vienna, 18 December 2006

Editorship & sending:
PR&D - Public relation for Research & development
Campus Vienna bio center 2
A-1030 Vienna
T +43/1/505 70 44
E contact@prd.at

Over the Campus Vienna bio center:
The Campus Vienna bio center is with approximately 1,000 Wissenschaftern and science gutters from 40 nations in 16 organizations of one the largest F&E cluster of Austria. Academic departments (University of Vienna, Medizin University of Vienna, in summary in the max of F. Perutz Laboratories), private research institutes (IMP - Institut for molecular pathology) and institutes of of the Austrian one academy of the sciences (IMBA - Institut for molecular biotechnology, GMI - Gregor Mendel institute) are here just as settled as commercial F&E as well as service enterprise and instruction courses (www.viennabiocenter.com).

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OpenPR - http://openpr.de/news/112951/Die-Kunst-zu-ueberleben-Private-Kunstsammler-in-der-UdSSR.html