Go down on one knee or not

 

Grandson of the collector Sergei Ivanovitch Shchukin, I do confirm that I have asked Irina Alexandrovna Antonova, manager of the Pushkin Museum of Arts, to make use of her great influence in order that my grandfather’s former mansion, mansion for which Matisse’s “Dance” has been conceived and painted, should be incorporated in her “Museums city”. That our house should once again be opened to the Moscow public as it used to be in my grandfather’s days before its confiscation in favour of people.

I flatly deny that this demand was a renunciation of the rights of my family, deprived of her inheritance.

For the first time, the scandal of the confiscation of the Shchukin’s and Morozov’s collections has exploded in London though we haven’t done, said, announced, prepared or start anything. Sergei Shchukin’s and Ivan Morozov’s shadows got up by themselves and the world press gave our cause an unexpected echo.

It’s not the time for renouncing: the Russian authorities claim that the confiscation decrees will not be revised, recognizing at last that there is a problem of revision. They announce that no compensations will be given, recognizing that there is a problem of compensations. They make up that all the States having diplomatic relations with Russia recognize the 1918-1922 confiscation decrees. But the States which had diplomatic relations with the IIIrd Reich didn’t recognize the racial Nazis laws, the States which have diplomatic relations with States of Islamic law don’t recognize chaaria, adulteress stoning or thieves amputation. When establishing diplomatic relations with Soviet Union in 1924, France hasn’t recognized either the refusal to pay back Russian borrowings or Leninist confiscations that its courts, through resounding trials, refused to implement on French territory.

It’s fifteen years that I formally have taken note that our paintings are in Russian museums. Fifteen years that I go on repeating that it’s necessary to find a reasonable compromise so that this national treasure shouldn’t remain the inheritance of passed violence but that the new Russia should enter into its possession by means of law. Fifteen years that I repeat that no democratic society can develop on Beauty rape.

Yes, I go down on one knee in front of museums which are and must be the beauty temples, but I shall never bow in front of my inheritance robbery.

André-Marc Delocque-Fourcaud