Artist Draper: Putin installation purchased for Albertinum

The Albertinum in Dresden has acquired a new addition to its collection in the form of an installation by artist Markus Draper. The work "House near a large forest" was acquired for the museum by a couple living in Berlin, Draper told the German Press Agency. The starting point is the city villa in which Russian President Vladimir Putin worked as an agent at the outpost of the Soviet secret service KGB from 1985 to 1990. The installation has been on display in the "Focus Albertinum" exhibition series since Whitsun.

Draper has recreated the city villa and its grounds on the Dresden Heath like a model set and used the results of his research into the history of the Soviet Union to create a film in the style of Russian fairy tales, interspersed with historical material such as documents, maps and views. It is about how the secret service KGB has been linked to the reform movements in the Soviet Union since the early 1980s.

He is interested in describing the unknown and the complexity of "what might have happened there", said Draper. Since the first presentation at Berlin's Künstlerhaus Bethanien in 2023, Draper has continued his research and added to the installation, for example with new insights into the ownership of the villa, Putin's "foster fathers" and their significance. "He was probably not a super agent, but was deliberately set up by his patrons at the time," said the artist.

According to Draper, the conductor Karl Böhm (1894-1981) and his family lived in the villa, which was built for a major in 1909, from 1935 to 1943. His son Karlheinz, who later became famous as an actor alongside Romy Schneider in the "Sissi" films, played in the garden. After 1945, the Red Army moved in and with it the KGB not far from the Stasi district administration.

Born Markus Richter in Görlitz in 1969, Draper lives and works in Berlin. In the past, he has also investigated formative events in recent German history - such as the Leipzig Monday Demonstration on October 9, 1989 or the unmasking of the RAF dropouts in the GDR - and turned them into works.