The Russian Bear Has Died

The Russian Bear Has Died

CHRISTINE KOENIGS
Spotlight

Image source: The Spoils of War (hardcover edition), Part V, pg. 164.

Author: Christine Koenigs

Last night, 30 November, Irina Antonova died today’s most feared death,  alone in a Moscow hospital, with a tube down her throat, at 98 years of age from the Covid19 Virus.

Irina Antonova (20 March 1922 - 30 November 2020), was an art historian who from a young age showed great commitment and enthusiasm to her field. She was one of the people, among which very few women who were there to receive the trucks sent home from Germany by Marshal Georgy Zhukov loaded with Trophies to be stored in Museums and repositories. The Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany was emptied in response to the Americans, who selected German Museum pieces to bring them to Washington DC. The Americans thus, prevented a replacement in kind.

For 75 years Irina Antonova took care of the Koenigs drawings. I am losing a friend.

The 1995 exhibition catalogue cover: Five Centuries of European Drawings. The Former Collection of Franz Koenigs.

The 1995 exhibition catalogue cover: Five Centuries of European Drawings. The Former Collection of Franz Koenigs.

In December 1990 it was discovered by Konstantin Akinsha, Grigory Kozlov and Alexander Rastorguev, the Pushkin Museum held the Trophy archives along with the actual works of art. Two years later, Joris Vos, the Ambassador to the Netherlands was blindfolded and driven around to be taken to a room, where he was shown the Koenigs drawings. He still relives the adventure today, baffled by their astonishing beauty. I met Irini at the Spoils of War Symposium in New York in 1995 along with with Evgenij Sidorov Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation, the State Secretary Michael Shydkoi and Valery Koulichov an official of the department of culture. At that occasion, while having dinner, Irina Antonova invited me to come to Moscow, to see the drawings, which we did. A little later, on October 2, 1995, she again invited us to Moscow, but this time with the entire Koenigs family, to see the exhibition of the Koenigs drawings. She exhibited all of the 309 drawings in the Pushkin museum main galleries, in what was a glorious exhibition, with a catalogue of the Koenigs drawings published by Mondadori. 

We met many times since that Мoscow trip and remained good friends.

In 2013, her post of Director was promoted to President of the Pushkin Museums of Art. 

She was a strong and decisive woman who never relented in her view about Trophy Art and who was not corrupted till the very end. She was many times rewarded and honored, nationally and internationally, from the Order of Lenin to the Legion d’Honneur in France.

She leaves a son Boris Rotenberg (1954).

Irina Antonova and Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich

Irina Antonova and Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich

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