After the first publication “The shadow player or Tabachnyk’s right hand man: the realist opinion about the collector Komskyi” we received a lot of feedback from the deceived readers who had to deal with the wrong side of the gallery and antique business.
It is already obvious to us that the material collected will be enough for a series of publications about the prevailing fraud schemes in the art sphere of Ukraine and its most prominent representatives. Therefore, we do not have the right to hide from the public the truth about Leonid Komskyi and the business, which has grown up on the deception of unsuspecting buyers of objects of art and cannot it. This is the first of our series of publications about Leonid Komskyi. And we hope that finally law enforcement agencies would like to seriously figure out what is happening at the market with a multi-million dollar turnover?
Despite Leonid Komskyi’s pre-bankruptcy, which we wrote about in the first publication, his “Ducat” auction house keeps working. Since December 6 to December 11, it is going to host the so-called “Quiet Auction”, which will feature 90 lots: painting, drawing, photography and sculpture by Ukrainian artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. And the question is what the real proportion of originals and fakes is among them. The potential buyers have to be on their toes in any case. And as for the fine art experts, public organizations representatives and law enforcement agencies, visiting the “Silent Auction” may be a good reason for demonstrating their expertise, civic engagement and professionalism, respectively.
Alas, it’s not unusual for Ukraine that a fake or stolen from museums is legalized through the official seller. And we still don’t known what is worse. We present you the information about several scandals associated with the notorious Ukrainian politician Dmytro Tabachnyk and his personal art dealer Leonid Komskyi.
“Ducat” gallery
How was the market of fake paintings formed?
In 2004, an exhibition of Ukrainian social realism paintings “From Private Collections” took place in Kyiv Museum of Russian Art. The event was personally supervised by Dmytro Tabachnyk, who was then a Vice-Prime Minister in Viktor Yanukovych’s Cabinet of Ministers. In one of the interviews shortly before the opening of the exhibition, Tabachnyk actively urged to buy the paintings by Ukrainian masters, as they are constantly increasing in price, and to develop the antique market. And then the unpleasant fact came to light: some of the paintings presented were fakes. A huge scandal broke out around the painting “The Wedding” by one of the most famous Ukrainian artists of the last century, Tetiana Yablonska. She then said: “This is not my work, as well as the other three paintings presented in the catalogue under my name.” No wonder she wasn’t even allowed to the exhibition! Yablonska appealed to the Podilskyi court so that the organizers refute the authorship of those pictures that appeared in the catalogue and that she was credited with, but with no success. After the death of the artist, her daughter appealedto the Shevchenkivskyi court in search of justice, trying to defend the honour and dignity of her deceased mother, but justice did not work here either – the high-ranking patron of the exhibition “From Private Collections” used administrative resources.
In August of 2015, Komsomolskaia Pravda wrote that Dmytro Tabachnyk fell under suspicion of the General Prosecutor’s Office because of the loss of four paintings by Mykola Hlushchenko from the building of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine: “On a fishing collective farm” (1952), “Sails on the sea” (1951 ), “The Dnipro Horizons” (1937) and “The Village by the River” (1951).
Here is a brief story. Back in 2001, the National Art Museum gave the Cabinet of Ministers 18 Hlushchenko’s paintings. The museum staff noticed their disappearance three years later, and the fact that the issue was brought to public only in 2011, after the commission of the Art Museum had made a reconciliation check in the government building.That is, for ten years, nobody knew what had happened to the paintings! After the press made a fuss about it the two paintings — “On a fishing collective farm”and “Sails on the sea” – were suddenly found. As for the other two — “The Dnipro Horizons” and “The Village by the River” — according to the museum workers, they turned out to be fakes made in the 2000s. How can we not quote Borys Kolesnykov, who said about Tabachnyk in an interviewfor the Observer in 2008: “What does he even know how to do except to steal books and paintings from the Ukrainian museums which are already poor enough?”
It is easy to explain an interest to Mykola Hlushchenko’s paintings. At official auctions, the average price of his paintings is above 100 thousand dollars. And it’s not just the talent of the first Ukrainian impressionist, who has written over 17 thousand paintings that matters; a great interest in his work is “warmed up” by the artist’s biography. He studied painting in Paris and Berlin, he taught Adolf Hitler to draw, and the latter called Hlushchenko his favourite artist. And besides, for a decade and a half, he has been an agent of the Soviet intelligence service and back in June of 1940, he passed an intelligence to Moscow that Germany was preparing an attack on the Soviet Union. Hlushchenko was a generous artist. He used to distribute 20-30 his sketches to visitors at one of his regular exhibitions. Such sketches are now sold at 30-40 thousand dollars. And in the mid-90s, when art museums were robbed in every city of Ukraine, the real Hlushchenko works hunting began.
After the scandal over the disappearance of Hlushchenko’s paintings, Dmytro Tabachnyk suddenly began to shrug off his interest in his paintings and collecting them, and finally said: “I am not an art lover, I am a bureaucrat!” The surprising thing is that while he was the leader of the Guild of Antiquaries of Ukraine and was a member of the editorial board of Antiquary magazine about art, published by his friend and personal art dealer Leonid Komskyi. However, these are just a few scandals, which have become public contrary to Tabachnyk-Komskyi duet’s plans. There are those not yet mentioned by the press. In the meantime, let us reveal the secret of the fake paintings appearance.
The Ukrainian collector Leonid Komskyi
The false art legalization: dealer’s dirty deeds
How does the technology of a fake painting production look like? First, you need to find paint and canvas that would look likethose fromthe era when the author worked. By the way, socialist realist artists who Dmytro Tabachnyk and Leonid Komskyi love so much, are ideal for this. The next step is to organize the “correct” examination, which turns a fake into a “true picture”. To do this with all the administrative resource, which Tabachnyk had, when he was a vice-prime minister for humanitarian affairs, was a mere formality. The third and final step– the proper sale through the controlled auction houses or galleries – Komskyi and his “Ducat” auction house worked precisely for these tasks.
Another option to legalize a fake painting is, oddly enough, the western auctions. The canvas does not have to be specifically written for this purpose. It is possible that there is a copy of a painting created by a student of an art school, but with all the time that has passed, its status is already incomprehensible due to a lack of information: there are no data in the catalogues, there are no high-quality photos of the original. The craftsmen use this fact, organizing the “correct examination” and putting it up for auction in Europe. After that, the painting is imported to Ukraine: a potential buyer will have no idea that there is a high-grade fake in front of him, estimated at tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In order for the sale of false art give rise to no doubt, everything should be properly furnished. “This is a system already:there are dealers, there are experts whom I trust. There is a tradition that has already establishedin two decades,”Dmytro Tabachnyk somehow let it slip out about the Ukrainian art infrastructure he had built. Tabachnyk’s main assistant in the art market was a dealer and an expert rolled into one, Leonid Komskyi.
Just like his once high-ranking patron, Komskyi is also considered a great connoisseur of Ukrainian social realism. As we wrote earlier, the gallery owner himself admitted that in his sales Mykola Hlushchenko’s paintings are among the leaders. But are those Mykola Hlushchenko’s original paintings that he sells so successfully?
“Fake is not put on the market immediately after production. Grade of freshness of the canvas by, let’s say, Hlushchenko, immediately catches the eye. Therefore, the work is artificially aged, you need to wait a few more years before trying to sell it,” Komskyi knowingly explained to the Capital newspaper.
In his interview for Komsomolskaia pravda, Komskyi authoritatively stated that the best way to insure against buying a fake painting is to consult professionals: “Although there are not many of them in Ukraine, there are some. And the best specialist is the antiquary himself.” Of course, he also ranks himself with this small number of pros, hinting at whom to turn to for the “expertise”. But after Tabachnyk’s running away, there was no one to provide Komskyi with a free stream of authentic paintings by Ukrainian artists. And things are getting worse every year. We have already reported of the arrest of all real estate property and $2 million mortgages.
By the way, now Komskyi strongly recommends to art lovers to replenish their collections with the works of such Ukrainian artists as Veniamin Kushnir, Mykola Tryhub, Alla Horska and Anatolii Lymar. They do not belong to socialist realism, but represent the underground: “Now this is a trend that is starting to get highly-prized”. Collectors, note: perhaps, if you have one of these authors’ painting, it can be a fake. Or maybe it was stolen from one of the museums.
The “Quiet auction” in “Ducat”, which begins on December 6, in the light of this material, fully justifies its name – false art or stolen paintings can be sold there without ringing any alarm bells. Hopefully, caring art experts and social activists will not allow the memory of the great Ukrainian artists whose names Komskyi trades, to be dishonoured.
