In 2013, Israeli art dealer Itzhak Zarug was at the center of one of the most controversial events in modern art history. Authorities seized over 1,000 Russian avant-garde paintings from a warehouse in Geneva — works allegedly by Malevich, Kandinsky, Rodchenko, and others. Zarug claimed these were authentic pieces suppressed during Stalin’s Soviet regime and preserved in private collections.
The art world responded with outrage. Experts dismissed the works as forgeries but they were real.