Karakalpak Art Collection Hits the Silver Screen

To those who know Karakalpakstan as the remote, arid and environmentally devastated corner of Uzbekistan once watered by the Aral Sea, it may come as a surprise to hear that its bleak capital, Nukus, is home to one of the world’s greatest collections of Soviet avant garde art. 

Now, a film about this once secret collection has hit the silver screen. The Desert of Forbidden Art, a documentary by filmmakers Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev about Igor Savitsky, the man who spent his life collecting the banned Soviet art, his museum and its collection, is touring art museums and film festivals around the world. Click here for a list of screenings.

Savitsky first went to Karakalpakstan in 1950 as member of an archaeological expedition, and, after falling in love with the region’s isolated art scene, he stayed. In 1966, he persuaded the local authorities in Nukus that the city needed a museum of art, and opened it with hundreds of paintings donated by Tashkent-based artist Ural Tansykbayev. 

Thanks to Nukus’ remoteness from Moscow politics and local officials’ ignorance of art, Savitsky collected some 40,000 paintings by Soviet artists banned for ideological reasons, artists who refused to paint propaganda in a social realist style.

The museum became widely known internationally only after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The monument to Savitsky and his efforts is now one of two things Karakalpakstan is famous for – good news as the other acclaim is one of the world’s worst environmental disasters.