A Russian naval officer spent years forging and selling works by renowned Soviet sculptor Ernst Neizvestny

Ernst Neizvestny was the most famous Soviet sculptor of the second half of the 20th century, known for expressive, symbolism-laden works that sometimes edged into abstraction. His career flourished during the Khrushchev Thaw, when socialist realism was no longer strictly enforced. But by 1962, after Nikita Khrushchev denounced an exhibition at the Moscow Manege, Neizvestny found official channels all but closed to him: he was expelled from the Artists’ Union and stripped of his studio. Paradoxically, it was Neizvestny who designed the monument on Khrushchev’s grave at Novodevichy Cemetery. That was among his last works in the Soviet Union; in 1977, he emigrated to the United States for good.

His most recognizable work may be “The Mask of Sorrow,” a 15-meter (49-foot) monument to the victims of political repression, unveiled in Magadan in 1996.

Neizvestny died in New York in 2016 at the age of 91. In 2025, the centenary of his birth was marked with a major retrospective: in December, the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow opened Epokha Neizvestnogo “The Neizvestny Era.” The exhibition ran until May 12. On May 29, news broke that some of the works on display were forgeries.

Russia’s federal Investigative Committee announced that over the past six years, a group of forgers had faked at least 30 sculptures and paintings by Neizvestny, selling them to collectors and netting at least 90 million rubles in total. The collectors had no idea the works were counterfeit and only found out after lending them to the Tretyakov for the exhibition. The show’s curator, Elena Gribonosova-Grebneva, told the Russian business daily Kommersant that the sculptures had not been authenticated before the exhibition opened; the fraud was discovered during the show itself, though who uncovered it and how remains unknown.

Among the victims in the case, Kommersant names Lyubov Agafonova, founder of the Vellum Gallery; Roza Verkhovyna, director of the auction house Pervye Imena (“First Names”); and Vyacheslav Yershov, executive director of the Prometheus Art Foundation. The outlet also listed Konstantin Ernst, director of the Russian state-controlled television channel Channel One, as a victim, but later reported that he has no role in the case “in any capacity.”

The first and so far only person charged is Maxim Koshkarev, a captain second rank and deputy chief of staff of the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet. Koshkarev was detained and placed under house arrest on April 28, according to Kommersant. He is charged with “the illegal use of copyrighted works — specifically the acquisition, storage, and transportation of counterfeit copies for the purpose of sale — as well as large-scale fraud.”

A source familiar with the sculptor’s heirs told Kommersant that Neizvestny’s widow, Anna Graham, who, according to the source, “has no understanding of his art,” may have been involved in creating the forgeries. The forgers, the source suggested, likely used the sculptor’s own molds, which he had used to cast his works.

Agafonova, one of the victims, told Kommersant that she had suspected two years ago that forgeries of Neizvestny’s work were appearing on the art market and had asked colleagues not to exhibit works that looked like copies of already known sculptures. At the time, Koshkarev contacted her and threatened her for “confronting the dealers.”