In the mid-2000s, a large private collection of Ukrainian and Russian avant-garde art appeared in Europe, consisting of hundreds of masterpieces – paintings by Lissitzky, Rodchenko, Exter, Goncharova, and other masters.
It became known as the Sachs Collection after the owner, and works from it sold in Europe for hundreds of thousands of Swiss francs.
Works from the Sachs collection now hang in two important American museums and one in Europe. One of them has been featured in recent Hollywood films, including Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer.
But experts say the paintings may be fakes, and the story of the collection's origin is a set of myths and fantasies.
While three art detectives investigated this legend of the lost Grail of the Ukrainian and Russian avant-garde, BBC correspondents searched for its mysterious owner and those who helped him sell the questionable paintings.
From Belarusian villages to Swiss auctions
In the early 2000s, an unknown private collector appeared in Minsk with good news: he had found a huge collection of Ukrainian and Russian avant-garde paintings, and he wanted to exhibit them in Belarus.
The collection included over two hundred paintings, including canvases by Lazar “El” Lisitsky, Alexander Rodchenko, Volodymyr Tatlin, Ilya Chashnyk, Natalia Goncharova, Lyubov Popova, Alexandra Ekster, Ivan Klyun, Robert Falk, and other masters.
Its mysterious owner was Soviet émigré Leonid Zaks, now an Israeli citizen. He said that the unique collection was assembled by his relatives, who received some of the masterpieces as gifts from Belarusian peasants, and bought the rest either in Moscow or Minsk consignment shops in the 1950s.
Belarusian cultural officials embraced the story with enthusiasm and organized several exhibitions.
But art historians were alarmed by Sachs's diligent avoidance of the National Art Museum of Belarus, the historical errors in his interview, and finally the very quality of the paintings.
Vitebsk historian Alexander Lisov drew attention to the hoax: the catalog of one of the Belarusian exhibitions stated that the authenticity of the paintings was confirmed by “N. Selezneva,” an employee of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. But there was never such an employee at the museum.
After that, exhibitions were no longer held in Belarus, and the article about the Sachs collection was removed from Wikipedia.
However, this did not stop the collector, but only changed the field of his activity. The exhibitions of the collection continued - but now at the private Swiss gallery Orlando in Zurich.
Between 2007 and 2014, at least five major exhibitions of the Sachs collection were held there, and since it is a commercial gallery, all the paintings were available for sale.
Most of them were bought by private collectors - sometimes for hundreds of thousands of Swiss francs. For one family, these purchases caused family drama.
Art for the blind
When Rudolf Blum, the legendary Zurich collector, went blind in 2005, his wife Leonor took over his business. She began actively buying art through the Zurich gallery Orlando, owned by her friend, Suzanne Orlando. Leonor Blum managed to buy dozens of paintings worth millions of Swiss francs.
Among them were paintings by the first-rate avant-garde artists: Lisitsky, Rodchenko, Popova, Tatlin, Exter.
“Mom wanted to prove that she knew painting as well as her father, and she believed Suzanne Orlando,” recalls Beatrice Gimpel McNally, the Blums’ daughter. “My father began to suspect something was wrong, but what could he do?”.
By the time Leonor Blum started buying these paintings, she had already been diagnosed with vascular dementia. But when Beatrice shared her doubts with her mother, she was very offended.
These paintings ruined their relationship forever.
However, Beatrice's suspicions were justified. After her parents' deaths, estate appraisers said the paintings from the Sachs collection were worthless. Auction houses in London refused to consider them, but one of them advised her to contact James Butterwick, a British dealer and expert on Ukrainian and Russian avant-garde art.
The “Derussification” of the avant-garde
Until recently, the term “Russian avant-garde” was used to refer to the works of artists created in the first quarter of the 20th century in the territory of the former Soviet Union, and this concept included such movements as Suprematism, Constructivism, Promenade, Cubo-Futurism, etc. Now this term is considered inappropriate, imperialistic, and colonial. Alternative definitions are increasingly used, such as “Ukrainian” and “Soviet” avant-garde.
In 2022, after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the word "Russian" also disappeared from the name of James Butterwick's gallery - instead it said that the gallery was dedicated to "Ukrainian and European art.".
Butterwick became fascinated with avant-garde art after a student exchange in the USSR, after which he even moved to live in Moscow for a while.
Then, in the 1990s, with the advent of a market economy, the art market emerged from the underground and was flooded with fakes. But it wasn't about mass production of fakes, but rather about an uncritical attitude towards old things.
Everything changed in the 2000s, when Russian capital moved to the West. In December 2004, two London auctions featured over a thousand paintings by Russian and Ukrainian artists. And they were mostly bought by Russians.
In November 2008, at the height of the global economic crisis, Malevich's "Suprematist Composition" sold at a New York auction for a record $60 million. Ten years later, the same painting would sell for $86 million.
The price spike has spawned an industry producing and servicing entire counterfeit collections, experts say.
Soon, police raids in Europe will begin to uncover warehouses containing hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of paintings of unknown origin.
Butterwick also began to notice that more and more questionable paintings that clients showed him were accompanied by articles and expert opinions.
Such papers were accompanied by paintings that the Blums' daughter Beatrice had sent him.
James decided to investigate this story together with his friends, Ukrainian art critic and curator Konstantin Akinsha and St. Petersburg collector Andriy Vasiliev.
Akinsha, who specializes in provenance, that is, the history of the origin of works of art, offered to understand the incredible history of the collection.
“Working on fakes”
According to Leonid Zaks, the founder of the collection was his grandfather Zalman, a merchant from what was then Katerynoslav (now the city of Dnipro). Zalman allegedly became fascinated with radical art after seeing it in a Belgian bank in Katerynoslav and began buying up paintings.
Anna (Nehama) Sachs, a military doctor, continued her father's work. In 1944–1945, she treated Belarusian peasants, who brought her paintings by Lissitzky and Exter in gratitude for her work.
And the final contribution to the future collection was made by Anna's brother Moses, who disappeared in 1941 at the front, and in the 1950s supposedly appeared in Moscow as an American businessman.
At that time, the works of avant-garde artists were condemned as “formalist art” and sold in consignment shops.
Moisei Zaks, according to family tradition, bought several dozen of these masterpieces in 1955–1956 and took them to Europe. There they lay until the 1990s, when the collection was inherited by his nephew, an oilman from Moscow named Leonid Zaks, who told these fascinating stories about his relatives.
As proof, Sachs provided buyers with a letter from the National Museum of History and Culture of Belarus from 2008, which describes this entire story in detail - but with significant contradictions, strange errors and typos.
In response to Vasiliev's request, the museum reported that no such letter had been found in the archive.
“That is, by all parameters this letter is fake,” the collector concludes.
But the art detectives didn't stop there. They conducted research in Russian and Belarusian archives, wrote dozens of requests to museums, and verified all the key facts of this story.
“We have checked the entire provenance of the Sachs collection, and every element of this provenance is not confirmed by anything, rather we are able to refute it. We have a classic provenance myth,” says Akinsha.
In museums and Hollywood movies
PHOTO BY UNIVERSAL PICTURES Photo caption: Cillian Murphy's Oppenheimer looks at a painting from the Sachs collection that was attributed to Ivan Kluen
Two works from the Sachs collection are housed at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The first was attributed to Ukrainian artist Oleksandra Exter, and the second, “The Watchmaker,” was attributed to Ivan Klyun.
It was “The Watchmaker” that ended up in two 2023 films – Chris Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” and Wes Anderson’s “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.”.
The BBC contacted the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and reported that it was checking the provenance of the Sachs collection. The museum promised to conduct its own investigation.
Shortly after our letter, the painting was removed from the exhibition, and the caption for it on the institute’s website changed. It is now listed as “attributed to Ivan Klyun.”.
Another painting from the Sachs collection, attributed to Ukrainian avant-garde artist Alexandra Exter, is housed at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum curators were interested in the results of the BBC investigation, but declined to comment.
We discovered that another work from the Sachs collection was in the world-famous Albertina Gallery in Vienna. It was called “Genoa” and was also attributed to the avant-garde artist Exter.
Speaking to the BBC, museum representatives said they had conducted their own inspections of the painting and that it was not being exhibited.
Flat screen TV in an 18th century interior.
Beatrice gave the BBC two paintings from the Sachs collection – “Proune” by El Lissitzky and “Paintingsque Architectonics” by Lyubov Popova.
We brought them from Zurich to the Art Discovery laboratory in London, where they were analyzed by Gillian Nadolny, a leading scholar in the field of technical and technological analysis of painting, who has debunked dozens of fakes of the “Russian” avant-garde.
Her analysis revealed in the painting by Lissitzky, who died in 1941, fibers frozen deep in the paint, which were treated with substances that became widely available only after World War II.
“It’s like an 18th-century painting with a flat-screen TV in the background. It’s impossible. It can’t be. It doesn’t happen,” she said.
The painting is a forgery, Nadolny wrote in her conclusion. She reached the same conclusion regarding the painting attributed to Popova.
The BBC also tracked down those who helped Sacks build a reputation for the collection – and wrote articles that the Orlando gallery gave to Beatrice's parents to convince them of the authenticity of the paintings being sold.
Anton Uspensky, a leading researcher at the Russian Museum, is the only living art historian associated with a prominent museum who has spoken positively about the Saks collection. He has published three articles about the collection, including in prestigious journals.
But in a conversation with the BBC, he said that he did not verify this information himself and wrote everything from Sachs's words: "These are family memories that are not confirmed in any way, not recorded anywhere.".
He also noted that he had not verified the authenticity of the paintings – and had never even seen any of the works, only photographs. He said he was unaware of the use of his name in the sale.
In the articles, Ouspensky also claimed that another “Proun” by Lissitzky from the Sachs collection was purchased by the Basel Art Museum – however, this is not true.
"As a result of intensive research in our archives, we have not found any traces of the Sachs family in general or of works relating to them in particular," the head of provenance research at the Basel Museum told the BBC.
Vitebsk art critic Tatyana Kotovych also wrote a lot and praised the Saks collection.
"This is news to me. What you're talking about is the use of my name. There's no statement anywhere that I guarantee that it's this artist," she said when asked by the BBC about the role of her articles in selling paintings.
Kotovich wrote that “Sacks fruitfully cooperates with the most prominent experts,” and listed members of the association of experts of the “Russian” avant-garde, InCoRM, who issued certificates for many works from the collection that were sold at the Orlando gallery.
Shortly thereafter, InCoRM found itself at the center of two scandals when its members' certificates surfaced in high-profile trials of Russian avant-garde forgeries in Germany and Belgium.
Patricia Reiling, founder and president of InCoRM, told the BBC that the organization had collapsed due to attacks from critics: "With all these accusations of forgery and defamation, no one wanted to deal with it anymore...".
“Who should I trust – strangers or my mother?”
PHOTO AUTHOR, KP
During this time, the BBC also tried to speak to Leonid Zaks himself. We wrote and called him at every possible address and number. His daughter sent him our request, but Zaks did not respond even then.
And just two weeks before the release of our investigation, he got in touch and suddenly agreed to a phone interview.
What is happening with the part of his collection that he did not manage to sell and where is it now? Sachs evaded the answer: “I would like to avoid this question and some others… price and others… It is stored, this collection, in a European warehouse.”.
He denied any responsibility for the paintings sold on the European market.
“I have been detached from these paintings since they left the Orlando Gallery. I think these questions should not be addressed to me!”.
Every time he repeated: “I didn’t sell anything.”.
Then we asked him about the provenance of the collection. How can he confirm the stories about peasants distributing modernist masterpieces in 1944–1945?
“What evidence is there? Can you imagine what was there after the war?” replied Sachs.
In response to the experts' conclusions, the collector said that the history of the collection was recorded by his mother, an "honest person," and added: "So who should I believe - people I don't know or my mother?".
Sachs was also surprised by the sums Beatrice's parents paid for works from his collection. He claimed that his works could not have been worth hundreds of thousands of Swiss francs – and called such sums delusional.
“I have never seen so much money from the Orlando Gallery,” he said.
Sachs was also offended that Anton Uspensky told the BBC that he had not seen the paintings and had not participated in their sale.
“Uspensky had been to the Orlando Gallery, and repeatedly, by the way. And he saw what kind of gallery it was, how it worked. He knew that it was a commercial gallery, like a store,” insisted Sachs.
At the end of the conversation, we asked Sachs if he wanted to apologize to Beatrice.
“I can’t apologize, but I can sympathize. There’s nothing to apologize for,” he replied.
“A wave of fakes has flooded the whole world”
Defrauded collectors of expensive paintings rarely arouse sympathy. After all, these are rich people with extra money.
But in the case of Malevich, Lissitzky, Exter, Popova, Goncharova, and other avant-garde masters, it has long been not just a matter of losses to private buyers – but a threat to their entire legacy.
“There are much more fakes than real things,” says Andriy Vasyliev.
The history of the Sachs collection shows how easily questionable paintings with fabricated stories can find their way into the world's leading museums, where they are seen by hundreds of thousands of people, appear in textbooks, and educate a new generation of art historians.
It is the prevalence of fakes that has forced Akinsha, Vasiliev, and Butterwick to fight against counterfeits. But sometimes even they despair – and assume that the outcome of this battle is already known.
“With the help of numerous art historians who consider themselves academic scholars and at the same time generously issue certificates confirming the authenticity of dubious works, the avant-garde has turned into a giant room of crooked mirrors inhabited by monstrous twins,” Akinsha wrote in one of his articles.
Despite many losses, the work of radical experimenters of that era – Ukrainian, Russian, and Jewish artists – was still able to survive the persecution of the Soviet regime, World War II, and the Iron Curtain.
But decades of market booms and the resulting wave of counterfeiting threaten to bury their legacy under mountains of poor copies.
