Bored Security Guard Draws Eyes On Faceless $1 Million Painting

A valuable avant-garde painting has been vandalized by a “bored” security guard who drew eyes on faceless figures in an abstract painting worth over $1 million. The act was committed on his first day working at the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center in Yekaterinburg, Russia. 

The vandalism was first noticed on December 7 by two visitors who raised the alarm with a gallery employee. The painting was removed from the exhibition and returned to the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moskow, which owns the painting.

The painting “Three Figures” (1932-1934) by Anna Leporskaya shows three torsos and heads with hair but no facial features. Anna Reshetkina, the curator of the exhibition at the Yelstin Center in Yekaterinburg, said administrators were still baffled by the security guard’s decision to add eyes “with a Yeltsin Center-branded” ballpoint pen. “His motives are still unknown, but the administration believes it was kind of “a lapse in sanity,” Reshetkina told The Guardian.

“The ink has slightly penetrated into the paint layer since the titanium white used to paint the faces is not covered with author’s varnish, as is often the case in abstract painting of that time,” Ivan Petrov wrote in the Art Newspaper. “Fortunately, the vandal drew with a pen without strong pressure, and therefore the relief of the strokes as a whole was not disturbed. The left figure also had a small crumble of the paint layer up to the underlying layer of the face.” 

It has now been sent for restoration to the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow for $4,600.

The Russian news site RBK said a criminal case has been opened on charges that carry a sentence of up to three months in prison. According to Russian media reports, the unnamed security guard faces vandalism charges.

The deputy director of the center, Ilya Shipilovskikh, said the security guard was hospitalized shortly after the act of vandalism, noting that “apparently this has all affected him greatly.”