For the past five years, collectors from the former Soviet Union have dominated Russian-art sales by paying record sums for classic works by revered names. But as traditional Russian areas, such as 19th-century genre pictures, took off, astute observers realized it was just a matter of time before this collector base would begin to look beyond its national heritage to Western art, and to spend lavishly on it. For many, the proof that this group had already arrived in the upper echelons of the international art market was the sale to an anonymous Eastern European bidder of Picasso’s Dora Maar au chat for $95.2 million at Sotheby’s New York in May 2006.

Russians may, in fact, be bidding up 20th-century French and German paintings instead of glittering Fabergé jewels. But how much are they really spending on non-Russian art, and what are they buying? Very little hard data exist on either count, since few of these collectors have made their identities, let alone their purchases, public. And with rumors driving perceptions, separating fact from fiction is difficult, especially when an “Eastern European” accent overheard at an art fair is taken as proof that deep-pocketed Russians are storming world art markets. Complicating matters, many names that sound Russian to untrained Western ears actually belong to citizens of other former Soviet republics: Ukraine and Georgia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. The buyer of the $95 million Picasso is believed to be Georgian billionaire Boris Ivanishvili.

What is certain is that while about 70 percent of Russia’s 142 million citizens still live in dismal poverty, some of the country’s residents are awash in money, much of it petrodollars or fortunes made when the government privatized many industries after the collapse of the Communist regime, in 1991. After decades of Soviet dictatorship and economic mismanagement, Russia is now home to one of the largest populations of billionaires in the world—at least 60—as well as to about 120,000 millionaires, according to Forbes and Deutsche Bank. And this affluent class is eager to spend freely, on real estate, private jets, designer clothing and expensive jewelry. The taste for luxury extends to art. To wealthy Russians, Rubens, Monet, Matisse and Picasso are status-conferring brand names that they know from childhood visits to the State Hermitage Museum, in St. Petersburg, and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, in Moscow. 

Most art dealers who cater to this group of collectors agree that in purchasing Western works, their clients are seeking not international headlines but the prestige such purchases bring within their tight-knit social circles. Some believe that only a small number of the buyers have an intellectual commitment to the art, and that most wealthy Russians are pragmatists who regard their acquisitions as investments and as ways to fill the walls of their homes.

For certain dealers and auction houses, the idea that Russian plutocrats could take up the slack created by potentially declining American and British financial power is soothing. They point to the firmly rooted tradition of connoisseurship in Russia and a longtime fascination with European civilization. Before the Communists seized power, in 1917, the country was home to great art collectors, who often bought entire collections from London, Rome and Paris. In the second half of the 18th century, Catherine the Great had ambassadors arrange the purchase of some of the grandest European holdings, including the Dutch and Flemish paintings once owned by Sir Robert Walpole, which were sold to the empress by Christie’s London. (The pictures are now in the Hermitage.) Early 20th-century Moscow entrepreneurs Sergey Shchukin and Ivan Morozov acquired hundreds of French Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and modern works by artists such as Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso and van Gogh.

“Russians are extensively buying non-Russian art, especially European,” says New York dealer Luba Mosionzhnik. “They are buying Impressionist, modern and German Expressionist. There’s probably not a field they aren’t interested in.” Banking on this interest, Mosionzhnik opened the Shkola gallery in Moscow early last year, becoming the first Stateside dealer to set up shop in the capital.