Ilya Kabakov

Abramovich Bankrolls Bacon Show at Girlfriend's Gallery

Filed under: Art, Wealth

Profligate Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich is bankrolling a major Francis Bacon exhibition at his gorgeous 27-year-old girlfriend Dasha Zhukova's new Moscow art gallery in 2010. The show at the luxe gallery, called the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture and also financed by Abramovich, will be entitled Death Shadowing Life: Francis Bacon: The Late Paintings, 1971-92, and will subsequently travel to the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, The Art Newspaper reports. The announcement would seem to explain Abramovich's astounding $86.3 million acquisition of a Bacon triptych at Sotheby's in May. Zhukova's gallery officially opens on Sept. 16 with an Ilya Kabakov retrospective.

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