Local man is among the ‘top 10’ Russian art collectors nationwide

Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2001 | 8:54 a.m.

Paintings cover the living room walls of a 2,000-square-foot suite on the 16th floor of the Regency Towers luxury condominiums, which dominate the skyline east of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

They cover the walls of the narrow hallways that lead to two bedrooms (where the walls also are covered with paintings) and to four closets, which are stuffed with paintings for which there is no other available space.

Fourteen floors below the apartment is a 120-square-foot storage room, where more paintings stand in a cramped, dark space, waiting for the day when there will be a wall somewhere for them. Most are valued in the range of $10,000-$50,000. Two, by Russian artist Vasilio Kadinsky, have been appraised at $175,000 apiece.

They range in size from small sketches and lithographs by Picasso, to an oil by Aleksei Sundukov that, at 6 by 9 feet, covers almost half of a bedroom wall.

The Sundukov work depicts a Russian crowd scene painted in gray (but for a few red lips, wounds and Communist symbols). Hundreds of figures, including that of Lenin, are squeezed into a tight space on canvas, creating a claustrophobic feeling that is not unlike the sensation a visitor gets when stepping into the private gallery that towers above Las Vegas.

"I have 130 paintings on these walls," Dr. Rupert Perrin, 72, said. "I have 1,000 or more in storage all over the place, in this closet, in that closet. I have about 500 hanging on walls at my homes in Jamaica and Beverly Hills (Calif.)."

"I'm looking for a house (in Las Vegas) so that I can display more ... then, I will have a big garage and I will put a lot on the garage walls."

Perrin is a retired research scientist who made a fortune on patents in the field of endocrinology, a branch of medicine focusing on hormones.

Although he has lived in the United States more than half his life, Perrin has retained the vocal inflection of his native Jamaica, where he became interested in art at age 10.

"I grew up in an area of Jamaica where, because of the higher elevation, there was good climate year-round, and quite a few artists gravitated to that area," recalled Perrin, who is also a medical doctor and has spent his entire career in research.

"I became friendly with these guys. When my grandmother asked me what I wanted for my 10th birthday, I told her I wanted a certain painting -- it was a painting with waterlilies, so beautiful, it was like you could reach out and touch them."

Out of the waterlilies grew a lifelong passion for art.

Pursuit of art

Perrin divides his time among Jamaica, California and Las Vegas, where he established a residence about a year ago (he likes the fine restaurants and entertainment here, he said). Perrin's obsession with art, however, follows him wherever he goes.

While he was in school he couldn't afford to collect art, so he spent much of his spare time at galleries, studying the subject. In England Perrin earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry at Oxford University and did post-graduate work at Cambridge. He received his medical degree in 1954 at McGill University in Montreal.

Perrin's obsession with collecting did not blossom fully until he became a senior research associate at the University of Southern California, where he taught and performed hormone research until 1968, when he switched from academics to the corporate world.

While his career was in the lab, he says his real life was in the art galleries, where he began spending more time and money.

"In the early '60s I formed a sort of club in Marina Del Rey (Calif.) made up of young doctors and lawyers. I told them they needed to quit wasting money doing crazy things (such as partying) when art was such a good investment.

"I got experts to come and talk to the group about art and what art they should invest in and to explain what was a lithograph, an etching, a serigraph and an aquatint.

"I figured some of those guys (young doctors and lawyers) were so insular in their philosophy about life. But when you study art, art opens up a whole new world of perception. Art is the key word to a higher calling."

Perrin (who is also a cousin to Secretary of State Colin Powell) figured the swinging young bachelors of his social group could use a little higher calling.

"I just wanted these guys to be a little more aesthetic. They were young guys, unmarried, wasting their money. I asked them, 'How can you live in a place without something on the wall?' With some of them, it became an obsession, like with me.

"Whenever we got a little extra money, we would buy art. It elevates the person to a certain prestige level in the eyes of the ordinary guy. They were very proud of the fact that I got them into it."

Although among Perrin's collection are works (sketches and lithographs) by Picasso, Mexican artist Diego Rivera and a variety of others, his true passion is Russian art. He has more than 1,000 paintings by artists from the former Soviet Union.

"Throughout my collection, you can see the struggle all these artists have undergone in order to arrive at their artistic truth," Perrin said. "It was especially so in a society that was engaged in such an effort to destroy these truths of expression."

He turned his artistic eye toward Russian painters in the mid-1980s, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, but during a time when the artists behind the Iron Curtain were beginning to express themselves more openly.

"Eduard Nehamkin (an art dealer) introduced me to Russian art in the United States. He had galleries in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. When I saw these various works of Russian artists I thought they were superior artists to Americans, who at that time were asking tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands, for their art that was of inferior quality. So I started looking at the Russian works, and I started collecting."

And he hasn't stopped.

Top collector

"I would say Dr. Perrin is one of the top 10 collectors (of Russian art) in the country," said Christine Sperber, director and co-owner of the Mimi Ferzt Gallery in New York City, which has specialized in Russian contemporary art for the past eight years.

Sperber said Perrin, whom she has known for more than 10 years, has one of the best collections of Russian art on the West Coast.

"I was a collector first (before a gallery owner)," she said. "There was an underground movement in the '80s of Russian contemporary art. Fantastic work was being done, but it was not known about.

"There was a very important Russian avant garde art movement in the 1920s (in the Soviet Union), one of most important movements of the 20th century. (Today's Russian artists) are the second generation. Right now a lot of museums are holding Russian art shows, books are being published, academics are very interested. Once the academics become interested, then the collectors become interested. It is very new on the American scene."

Case in point: UNLV's Marjorie Barrick Museum is featuring an exhibit entitled "Cold War, Hot Culture: America and Russian Nonconformist Art," which runs through Feb. 16.

Sperber said her gallery handles about 10 of the top Russian painters in the country.

"They're very good artists, classically trained," she said. "But the art I find most appealing is the underground artists. That appeals to a lot of collectors. The artists' work is still reasonably priced, compared to artists of the same stature in the West. A work (by a Russian artist) in the Metropolitan Museum in New York might bring between $30,000 and $40,000, but if an American artist did it you would pay well over $100,000."

But money isn't the primary motive for Perrin's interest in Russian art.

"I've always collected because I like the art. I only purchase what I really like. I never thought of the consequence, because if (making money) were my major ambition I would never have collected Russian art to begin with."

His payoff is the inspiration he derives from the art.

"I go back to each painting with new insight, a new understanding. And also, it is extremely relaxing trying to get into the head of the artist, trying to figure out what he was thinking, " Perrin said.

One of his favorite artists in his collection is Mihail Chemiakin.

Chemiakin was drugged and put in an insane asylum before being exiled by the Soviet Union in the early 1970s because of his art work. During that period only art approved by the state could be produced. Many artists who did not obey the rules were killed. But Chiamkin, the son of a Russian general and a ballerina, was spared.

"He is a brilliant artist, and a friend," Perrin said. "The first Chemiakin painting I saw, it was as though a hand reached in and squeezed my soul."

Perrin was among 12 art collectors invited by Chemiakin to accompany him on a trip back to Moscow in 1988 for an exhibit of his work.

"Before then I traveled to Russia several times," Perrin said. "I bought art produced in secret. After one visit, two artists died in a suspicious fire, perhaps one set by the KGB (secret police)."

The suffering Russian artists have endured has earned them Perrin's undying admiration.

"They were so oppressed," he said. "Once, I climbed 30 staircases up to a little room about 10 by 12 feet, where four artists lived and painted around a coal stove."

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