A collection of Russian modern art worth millions. But is it fake? - BBC World Service Documentaries

Over the past twenty years, dozens of paintings from a private collection of Russian and Ukrainian modern art have been sold to museums and private collectors around the world.

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The collection is said to include over 200 oil paintings by revered avant-garde artists like El Lissitzky, Alexandra Exter, and Liubov Popova.

It’s one of the biggest collections of its kind in the world. But there are growing suspicions that the story behind the provenance of the paintings in the collection is made up, and that many of them could be worthless fakes.

The BBC follows the art detectives and scientists, trying to get to the truth about the Zaks collection and its mysterious owner.

The BBC’s Grigor Atanesian investigates.

00:00 Introduction
02:14 A fascination with Russian modern art
03:24 The importance of the Russian avant-garde
07:44 The Zaks collection
10:17 Collectors of the avant-garde
14:28 The 'Lissitsky', or is it?
15:52 The world's leading expert on Lissitsky
20:06 Why provenance is so important in the art world
30:42 Will AI prove it's a fake?
38:56 Looking for Leonid Zaks
41:47 A surprise phone call
44:41 An important lesson for buyers
46:20 Museums react
48:40 The ‘expert’ opinion behind some of the works
57:06 'It's all a bit dirty'

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