And three.
A third painting exhibited as part of the Morozov collection in Paris has been
"frozen"
and will remain in France, the Ministry of Culture announced on Friday to Agence France Presse.
The work in question is the property of a private foundation linked to a Russian oligarch concerned by European sanctions, the ministry said.
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The painting in question, whose identity has not been specified, belongs to the Museum of Avant-Garde Mastery (Magma), a foundation founded from the private collection of Viatcheslav Kantor.
A billionaire and philanthropist close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the oligarch is targeted by the asset freezing measures decided by Western countries, following the invasion of Russia in Ukraine on February 24.
His painting loaned for the exhibition was already the subject of a review by state services at the beginning of the month, when the first two objects were frozen.
Two works frozen in early April
On April 9, the Ministry of Culture had already announced the temporary seizure of two paintings from the Morozov collection on display until April 3 in Paris, in the galleries of the Louis Vuitton Foundation.
A first frozen painting, a self-portrait by painter Piotr Konchalovski, belongs to Petr Aven, another oligarch close to the Kremlin under Western sanctions.
The second painting, a portrait of Margarita Morozova painted in 1910 by Valentin Serov, belongs to the Ukrainian Museum of Fine Arts in Dnipropetrovsk, partner of the exhibition.
He was detained in France at the request of the Ukrainian authorities and will be returned as soon as
"the situation in the country allows his safe return"
, the ministry announced in early April.
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The Morozov collection, exhibited at the Louis Vuitton Foundation from September 22 to April 3, after having been extended in view of its success, includes around 200 works by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse... alongside Russian painters like Golovin, Malevich, Melnikov, Repin, Serov... These masterpieces were brought together by the two brothers, the Morozovs, industrialists passionate about modern art at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
This is the first time that their collection has come out of Russia, on this scale, to be exhibited abroad.
It was a great success with 1.25 million visitors, despite the health crisis which deprived it of its foreign visitors.
Most of the works had to return to their original institutions, mainly the Pushkin Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, as well as the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.