i am grateful that my father never really knew the extent of how he was duped. so, i m currently sitting on flight 317, london to zurich, to go and look at the paintings which were willed to beatrice by her parents. and my role really is to just see if the doubts that beatrice had are in any wayjustified. i think the most important thing is that, during my. grandfather s life, - he believed it was a real an original that he d bought. and that s the most important thing at the end of the day, i everybody would love it to be authentic, but it doesn t takei away from the style, which does replicate | lissitsky s. zaks would present buyers with reports from a lab in germany confirming the pigments and other materials matched those used in lissitsky s lifetime. but this alone isn t enough to prove the painting is a genuine lissitsky. so we are going to get some more analysis done in an independent lab. i m drjilleen nadolny. i m the director of the uk branch of art discovery h
To us as a culture. this is our historical record. and if we allow this to happen, we re destroying our own past. the minneapolis institute of art owns two paintings from the zaks collection. one is said to be a work by the ukrainian artist alexandra exter. the other is a mysterious work called the clockmaker by the russian artist ivan kliun. for a few months, we have been exchanging emails with the minneapolis institute. they told us they would conduct their own investigation into kliun s painting. they didn t share the result with the bbc. ..but the painting has now been removed from display. and on the institute s website, the painting is now only attributed to ivan kliun.
The description now includes information from the bbc that this painting comes from the zaks collection. and where previously the website said the institute had reviewed the paintings documentation, now it stresses that the data may not have been reviewed and may be inaccurate or incomplete. this is the painting that appeared in the background of two recent hollywood films. we asked the creators of both oppenheimer and the wonderful story of henry sugar if they would like to comment. they haven t responded. another painting from the zaks collection, attributed to the ukrainian artist alexandra exter, is in the cleveland museum of art. its curators expressed interest in the results of our investigation, but declined to comment. we have found out that one more zaks collection painting is in the possession of the albertina museum in vienna.
Called genoa, it was also attributed to exter. the museum has told us that they conducted their own analysis. the painting is not on display. this brings us to the last step in proving if a painting is real expert opinion. the bbc has obtained records showing that both museum curators and art experts helped mr zaks promote his collection. we tried to track some of them down.