Ukraine’s Kherson Art Museum has recently identified 100 looted artworks from its collection by Russian forces, with the assistance of a “propaganda video” filmed in a Crimean museum.
In a social media statement, the museum highlighted how looters inadvertently document their crimes, aiding in the identification of stolen art. The video in question was reportedly recorded in Crimea’s Central Museum of Tavrida and was broadcast on Russian television last September.
According to a Facebook post by the Kherson Art Museum, 99 out of the 100 identified works are believed to be located in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula illegally annexed from Ukraine by Russia in 2014. Ukraine and its allies do not acknowledge Russian sovereignty over Crimea, considering it an integral part of Ukraine, and have actively campaigned for its return since its annexation.
Among the works identified is Fishermen On The Seashore (1932) by Ivan Shulha, who was a renowned graphic designer, educator, and painter in the Soviet Socialist Realism tradition. Also sighted was Daughter of Guzel (1967) by watercolorist Venera Takaieva, and a 1967 oil painting by Yefrem Zverkov, a prominent landscape painter and founder of the “strict style” genre of Socialist Realism.
The Kherson Art Museum has identified three additional oil paintings by Ksenia Stetsenko, Anatolii Platonov, and Antonin Fomintsev among the artworks allegedly removed by Russian military forces from Ukrainian museums under the pretext of “evacuation.” These paintings were also observed in the aforementioned video footage.
According to the museum, the 100 identified works represent “less than 1 percent” of the total artworks recorded as looted from Ukrainian cultural institutions.
In a statement on Facebook, the Kherson Art Museum emphasized that each identified artwork serves as undeniable evidence of the presence of stolen works, particularly in the hands of Russian art looters. To counter any potential denials by the perpetrators, the museum is meticulously documenting and cataloging all visible artworks depicted in photos and videos from Crimea and Henichesk.
The systematic looting of Ukrainian museums by Russian forces, coupled with the destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage, has been extensively documented by Ukrainian media outlets since the outset of the invasion in February 2022. Prior to the Russian military’s withdrawal from Kherson, local cultural workers reported the near-complete depletion of the Kherson Regional Art Museum’s collection, while valuable artifacts from the Shovkunenko Regional Art Museum, renowned for its collection of fine and decorative arts from Ukraine and Russia, were also plundered.
