Roman Abramovich and ex-wife Dasha Zhukova amassed a ‘stupendous’ artwork assortment price nearly $1 billion, leaked paperwork reveal

• Roman Abramovich and his ex-wife have an artwork assortment price near $1 billion, leaked paperwork revealed.
• Works by Freud, Hockney, and Picasso are among the many 367 objects within the assortment, The Guardian reported.

Russian businessman Roman Abramovich and his ex-wife, Dasha Zhukova, have amassed an artwork assortment of 367 works price nearly $1 billion, an investigation by The Guardian and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Undertaking (OCCRP) has revealed.

Leaked recordsdata obtained from a Cyprus-based monetary providers supplier known as MeritServus that had been analyzed by The Guardian and OCCRP revealed the extent of the world’s most spectacular non-public artwork collections.

The gathering is managed by an organization known as Seline-Make investments, which is in flip owned by Abramovich’s belief, the Ermis Belief Settlement, in response to the investigation.

The gathering is price an estimated $963 million and consists of works by a few of the biggest trendy artists together with Picasso, Monet, Freud, and Hockney.

“You might fill a museum with it – it is a stupendous assortment,” Goldsmiths, College of London curation professor Andrew Renton informed The Guardian.

Masterpieces like Francis Bacon’s “Triptychs, 1976” value the couple $86.3 million, the best value paid at public sale for a post-war work, per The Artwork Newspaper.

Abramovich and Zhukova, who married in 2008 and separated in 2017, amassed the artworks over a decade throughout which they grew to become outstanding figures within the artwork world. The gathering was saved in south London, with objects sometimes lent to galleries beneath the nameless label of “non-public collector,” The Guardian reported.

The investigation additionally uncovered that Abramovich made strikes to guard the gathering from asset seizures in opposition to Russian oligarchs within the weeks earlier than Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The couple beforehand held a half-share of the gathering, however the paperwork confirmed that Zhukova took a 51% share on 4 February 2022.

The restructuring enabled Abramavich to take care of possession of the gathering, as solely property that had been majority-owned by a sanctioned particular person had been topic to seizure.

Zhukova is a darling of the worldwide artwork scene and is on the boards of a number of well-known galleries. By way of her second marriage she is now a US citizen and exempt from any sanctions. She has condemned Putin’s “acts of warfare,” per The Guardian.

Abramovich was amongst seven Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the UK in March final yr. His property, together with Chelsea soccer membership, had been frozen and his $700 million superyacht, on which items from the artwork assortment are believed to be displayed, was seized.

He’s additionally blocked from doing enterprise in Britain or coming into the UK.

The leaked recordsdata solely date again to 2022, leaving the present location of the gathering unclear.

Representatives for Abramovich and Zhukova didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark from Insider. Each declined to remark to The Guardian.

Meritservus has been sanctioned by the UK Authorities.