# Savitsky Museum: the Louvre of the steppe

> In Nukus, one of the world's most important collections of Soviet-era banned avant-garde art — 90,000 paintings smuggled out of Moscow during the 1930s–60s and preserved by an obsessive collector.

The Karakalpak State Museum of Art, universally called the **Savitsky Museum** after its founder, holds the second-largest collection of Russian avant-garde art in the world after the Russian Museum in St Petersburg — but with far more banned and semi-banned artists.

**Igor Savitsky** (1915–1984) was a Ukrainian painter who moved to Nukus in the 1950s to work on ethnographic expeditions. Living in a remote autonomous republic 1,600 km from Moscow, he realised he was insulated enough from Soviet cultural authorities to collect art that would have been destroyed elsewhere.

Over 30 years he:
- Bought up thousands of paintings from widows of purged artists (often for tiny sums or in exchange for food).
- Smuggled works from Moscow and Leningrad in his suitcase.
- Convinced the Karakalpak government he was collecting "revolutionary local culture" — a fig-leaf that let officially banned Fauvist and Constructivist work into a state museum.

Highlights of the collection:
- **Alexander Volkov** — bright Cézanne-influenced landscapes of Uzbekistan.
- **Ural Tansykbayev** — Kazakh modernism.
- **Nadezhda Kashina** — dreamy interior scenes.
- **Alexander Nikolayev (Usto Mumin)** — mystical Persian-influenced miniatures.

Plus a serious ethnographic wing with Karakalpak jewellery, yurt furnishings, and archaeological finds from Khorezm.

Nukus is a 15-hour train ride or 2-hour flight from Tashkent. The museum alone justifies the trip.

---
Keywords: Savitsky, Nukus, Karakalpakstan, museum, avant-garde, Soviet art
Updated: 2026-08-15
Category: destinations
URL: https://uzbguidedtours.com/kb/kb-karakalpakstan-savitsky-museum