Defining Russian Post-War Art: A Collector’s Perspective

Event time: 
Wednesday, April 24, 2019 - 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Location: 
Loria Center for the History of Art (LORIA), 351 See map
190 York Street
New Haven, CT 06511
Event description: 

REEES Program, the Department of the History of Art, and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures present Igor Tsukanov, Chairman of the Tsukanov Family Foundation (“TFF”), an UK-based charity supporting education, culture, and the arts in Russia and around the world. Mr. Tsukanov will discuss “Defining Russian Post-War Art: A Collector’s Perspective.”

Bio:
Igor Tsukanov was born in 1962 in Moscow (Russia). He graduated from Moscow University in 1984 with a degree in Mathematical Economics, before going on to attain a PhD in International Economics and Finance from the Institute of World Economy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1992 he set up the CentreInvest Group, a financial services company headquartered in Moscow with offices in New York, London and Kiev, which he ran as the CEO and President for 15 years. After the sale of the CentreInvest Group to a consortium of commercial banks in 2007, Igor Tsukanov set up the private equity firm CentreInvest Capital Partners.

Currently Igor Tsukanov is Chairman of the Tsukanov Family Foundation (“TFF”), a UK-based charity supporting education, culture, and the arts in Russia and around the world.

For years the TFF has worked with leading Russian museums. Igor Tsukanov was involved in drafting the first sponsorship program for the Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow) that has been running successfully for the last 20 years. The TFF has financed acquisitions by the Tretyakov Gallery 15 artworks of Russian contemporary artists. In 2011 in partnership with the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA) the TFF arranged the retrospective exhibition “Point of View” of Leonid Sokov, a founding member of SotsArt movement. In 2015 the TFF and MMOMA held another breakthrough exhibition by the two legendary abstract Russian artists Vladimir Nemukhin “Facets of Formalism” and Lidya Masterkova “Lyrical Abstraction” that followed by Alexander Kosolapov “Lenin - Coca-Cola” (2017) and “Komar and Melamid” (2019).

In partnership with the Saatchi Gallery (London) in 2013 the TFF orchestrated the largest ever exhibition of the Russian post-war artists “Breaking the Ice: Moscow Art, 1960-1980s” that attracted almost 700, 000 visitors and was ranked in the top five of the most popular art shows in London, Paris and New York. The next TFF-Saatchi Gallery project in 2015 was titled “Post-Pop: East Meets West” that brought together 250 artworks of the 100 artists from the US, UK, China and Russia. In 2018 the TFF and Saatchi Gallery presented the first ever exhibition on the political Post-Soviet actionism “Art Riot” that featured such artists as Oleg Kulik, Pussy Riot and Pavel Pavlensky.

The TFF also sponsored numerous international art shows, including the latest one hugely popular “Russia and the Arts: The Age of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky” in the National Portrait Gallery (London).

In the art education the TFF supports art Yale School of Art (US), the Goldsmiths Art School (UK) and the Institute of Contemporary Art (Russia). At the Yale Art School the TFF has financed the Oleg Vassiliev scholarship that brings Russian artist and curators to Yale for making seminars and workshops. For the Goldsmiths Art School the TFF has structured and financed a student exchange program with the Institute of Contemporary Art (Moscow) that has been running since 2010.

The TFF owns one of the world’s largest collections of post-war Russian art, which can be found athttp://www.tsukanovartcollection.com/, and donates artworks to international museums, including its major donation to the collection of Russian art in the Pompidou Museum.

In addition, Igor Tsukanov is a member of the Development Committee of Eton College (UK), the Board of Trustees of the Moscow Multimedia Art Museum, the Pompidou Museum International Council (France), the Honorary Board of Directors of the Royal Opera House (UK). He also previously served as a member of the Russian and Eastern Europe Art Committee of the Tate Modern Museum (UK) and the Board of Directors of the Hermitage Foundation (USA).

Igor Tsukanov, Chairman of the Tsukanov Family Foundation ("TFF"), an UK-based charity supporting education, culture, and the arts in Russia and around the world