Yelena Basner

The leading avant-garde art historian Yelena Basner has been detained in Moscow over a problem with an alleged fake painting ‘At restaurant’ by Boris Grigoriev.  Reputedly this painting was bought by the St Petersburg collector Andrew Vasilyev for US$250,000 on the advice of Basner but turned out to be a fake.  Basner now consults for the Swedish auction house Bulkowski’s but was a curator at the Russian Museum from 1978 – 2003 and later worked at the Museum of the Avant-Garde in St Petersburg.  She is an authority on Kazimir Malevich and has curated many exhibitions on the Russian avant-garde both in Russia and abroad.  Art historians such as Mikhail Piotrovsky, the Director of the Hermitage, have united in their support for Basner saying she has been set up for exposing the truth.  Basner vigorously defends her actions.  Nothing is clear in this situation but the result will probably be that Russian museum curators will follow the practise of their western counterparts and become more wary of issuing certificates.