Russian elite scour globe for art of the motherland

By Amie Ferris-Rotman

MOSCOW (Reuters Life!) - Russian art is gathering international attention and hefty price tags as the country's elite buy their motherland's masterpieces away from home.

Avant-garde painters Rodchenko and Malevich, whose paintings symbolized early twentieth century Russia, sit in auction houses in New York and London, from where they are snatched up by nostalgic Russians for millions of dollars.

"The new class is rising, it's accumulating tremendous wealth, but there is a lack of symbols to identify themselves with," Mikhail Kamensky, director of auction house Sotheby's Russian division in Moscow, told Reuters.

"Russians are the biggest buyers of Russian art. They want to build up a new reputation in a wealthy international community and they do this through Russian cultural symbols," said Kamensky. Sotheby's set up its Moscow branch last May.

Kamensky talked with Russian art lovers in a revamped 19th century exhibit hall at a business conference organized by Troika Dialog brokerage this week in Moscow, which dedicated a session to art as business.

"It's incredible how many museums are popping up in Russia and how high auction prices are getting abroad. Russians want art on their walls of what they saw in childhood," said Georgy Nikich, curator of Moscow's Cultural Policy Institute.

The conference lined its halls with large paintings by Russian living artist Evgeny Chubarov, whose abstract works recently fetched hundreds of thousands of pounds at Sotheby's.

The auction house -- which was established in London over 260 years ago and now has branches across the world -- sold Russian art worth around 70 million pounds ($139.3 million) last year in Britain alone.