Kherson museum identifies three paintings taken by occupiers to Crimea
The Oleksii Shovkunenko Kherson Art Museum has identified three more paintings from its collection that were stolen by the Russian occupiers and taken to temporarily occupied Crimea.
Source: museum staff on their Facebook page
Details: They identified these exhibits using photos from the Central Taurida Museum in Simferopol. They were made on 1 April 2023, during the signing of the so-called "agreement" on the storage of stolen works of art there.
"We take another look at the photo from Simferopol, on which the list of stolen works was found. ... Several more works were deducted from the list, which are now most certainly illegally placed in the occupied Crimea," the museum reported.
This time, we managed to identify the following works from the collection of the Kherson Art Museum: the Park (1959) by Kherson painter and graphic artist Ivan Hopkalo, the Paris. Boulevard Madeleine (1967) by Ukrainian painter Mykhailo Chepyk, who was also one of Oleksii Shovkunenko's students, and Boats (1979) by Yurii Balykov, another student of Oleksii Shovkunenko.
"This is not where the museum quest ends. There will be more," Kherson museum workers added.
Two weeks ago, the Kherson Art Museum identified two paintings stolen by the Russian occupiers: Restorers, the painting by Latvian artist Karlis Dobrais (1962), which was donated by the author to the museum in Kherson in 2017, and On the Hills (1969), the painting by Ukrainian artist Leonid Labenko.
Russian soldiers looted the Kherson museum early in November last year. The occupiers removed items from the collection in trucks accompanied by armed men in civilian clothes for four days. Natali Desyatova, the "director" appointed by the occupiers, was in charge of the "evacuation".
Subsequently, the paintings from the Kherson Art Museum appeared in the Simferopol Art Museum; they were recognised by Alina Dotsenko, the director of the Kherson Art Museum. After their retreat from Kherson, the Russians also shelled the museum.
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