Avant-Garde Marvel: The Savitsky Museum, Nukus, Uzbekistan

The Igor Savitsky Museum in Nukus, northern Uzbekistan, not only has an incredible story, but is also home to the second biggest collection of Russian avant-garde art in the world.

Igor Savitsky, a former electrician born into a rich Russian family, came to this area on an archaeological dig around 1950 and started collecting local artefacts, textiles and jewellery. Because he was so far from Moscow (and the other centre of power, Tashkent) he was able to amass a huge collection of dissident avant-garde art.

Eventually he established a museum in 1966. The remoteness of the region allowed him to show and buy paintings that had been banned – the authorities simply had no idea what he was up to.

As the journalist Suzanne Moore wrote in The Guardian: “Savitsky risked everything for this collection. Some of these painters were tortured or murdered or spent long years in the gulags. The work collected is of both Russian and Uzbek artists who painted after the 30s, when all work that wasn’t socialist realism was banned by Stalin. Any other styles of the time – the emerging cubism, futurism, even impressionism – were deemed criminal. Formalism, as it was called, was punishable. And the punishments were severe. Savitsky realised he could rescue these works. He would take a train to Moscow - which took three days - and charm the families of the painters; they would bring down works stuffed in attics. He was known as “the widow’s friend”. Part chancer, part hoarder, he brought together this collection of which only a small percentage is on show.”

Today Savitsky’s amazing collection is the main reason people travel to Nukus, a remote town on Uzbekistan’s north-western border with Turkmenistan. We are able to arrange private, out of hours tours with the museum’s director, and everyone who goes here is amazed by what they see.

If you’d like to visit the Savitsky as part of a tailor-made tour then please get in touch.