A valuable avant garde painting has been vandalised by a “bored” security guard who drew eyes on faceless figures in the artwork on his first day working in a Russian gallery. Alexander Drozdov, the executive director of the Yeltsin Center, did not identify the security guard in a statement, but said he worked for a private security company and had been fired. The exhibition’s curator, Anna Reshetkina, said the painting was vandalised “with a Yeltsin Center-branded pen”. The painting was removed from the exhibition and returned to the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, which had loaned the painting. The Yeltsin Center has since installed protective screens over the remaining works in the exhibition.

Source: The Guardian February 11, 2022 03:40 UTC