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The identity of the security guard who vandalized a classical painting in a gallery in Moscow was revealed by the media as a former veteran war hero, decorated for courage.
Alexander Vasiliev, 63, used his pen to draw eyes on Anna Leporskaya’s painting “Three Figures” (1932-34), which was on display at the Yekaterinburg Museum.
He admitted today: “I’m a fool, I made a mistake.”
Vasiliev could face jail after police opened an investigation into vandalism, already saying he was prompted for action by some teenage girls attending an abstract art exhibition.
“To be honest, I do not like paintings in exhibitions. They left a difficult impression on me. “Every time I went I tried not to look at them,” he says.
“I also watched how people reacted to them, then there were those 16 or 17 year old girls, discussing why the figures had neither eyes, nor mouth, nor beauty.”
And one of them asked me, ‘You made the eyes, you work here.’
Vasiliev says he believed the paintings were works by teenagers and not expensive works of art.
Saying he had no idea how much the paintings cost, the ex-military added: “If I had known they were not children’s paintings I would not have done so. “I did not know they came from Moscow and cost so much.”
Once a lieutenant in the war in Chechnya, he further said he was seriously wounded and at the time did not believe he would survive.
In 1995, he was one of 36 soldiers who survived a fierce battle and has been honored for his courage.
His nurse wife, Julia, says he is a ‘normal’ man but can sometimes be as naive as a child.
After the incident the painting was removed to return to the Moscow gallery for repairs.
The cost of the renovation is set at $ 2,500 and will be paid by the company where Vasiliev worked.
Exhibition curator Anna Reshetkina said the guard was on his first day of work there.
“His motives are unknown but the administration believes it could be a detachment from the sense of reality,” she said.
The Russian daily Art Newspaper said that fortunately the damage had not penetrated deeply as not much force had been exerted with the pen.
Two visitors had spotted the details added to the painting “Three figures” on December 7 last year.
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