Russian Billionaire Withdraws Funding for Kabakov Retrospective in Moscow but Show will Go On

The Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes magazine at $19.5 billion, has pulled out as general sponsor of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov's first retrospective in their native Russia. Despite the setback, the artists say the show will open as planned on 15 September in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and CCC Moscow, a new gallery set up by Dasha Zhukova, partner of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. Ms Zhukova’s Center for Contemporary Culture is located in the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage built by Konstantin Melnikov, one of Russia's most important modernist architects.

Speaking to The Art Newspaper, Emilia Kabakov said she and her husband will still co-operate with the Prokhorov Foundation which will fund the publication of a book about the the artists.

At the end of April, the Norilsk-based Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation announced a grant of $2m to finance the Kabakov retrospective which will include more than 150 paintings, drawings and objects. The show has been organised in cooperation with the Russian Ministry of Culture.

There is speculation in the Russian art community that Mr Abramovich will step in to cover the $2m funding withdrawn by Mr Prokhorov. Ms Kabakov declined to comment on future sponsorship until this has been secured.

In an interview at her office in Moscow on 28 May, Irina Prokhorova, sister of Mikhail, and director of the Prokhorov Foundation, said she had a strong personal respect and interest in the Kabakovs’ art, but admitted there were a number of outstanding issues. She declined to elaborate. In an email to The Art Newspaper on 5 June, the Prokhorov Foundation confirmed its decision to withdraw funding but did not explain the reasons for this.

Speaking to The Art Newspaper at the Moscow World Fine Art Fair, Joseph Backstein, the Kabakov show's curator, hinted that media obsession with Dasha Zhukova had irritated Prokhorov as it threatened to overshadow the exhibition itself and its main sponsor.

Prokhorov, 43, made his fortune as a former owner of mining company, Norilsk Nickel.

The New York-based Kabakov, 74, is one of the founders of the Moscow conceptualist art movement that emerged in the 1960 and 1970s in the Soviet Union despite state repression against non-official art. Kabakov is Russia's most expensive postwar artist, and at the end of February his painting, “Beetle” (1982), sold at Phillips de Pury & Co in London for £2.9m.