Abramovich Finances Kabakov Show

Billionaire Roman Abramovich, owner of London's Chelsea Football Club, will finance Russia's first retrospective by postwar artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov.

The Moscow show opens September 15, and features more than 150 paintings, drawings, and objects. It will run until October 15 simultaneously at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, the Winzavod contemporary art center, and the Garage center for contemporary art, founded by Daria Zhukova, Mr. Abramovich's girlfriend.

The New York-based Mr. Kabakov, 74, is a founder of the Moscow conceptualist art movement that developed in the Soviet Union despite state repression of non-official art. In 1989, Mr. Kabakov began collaborating with his wife, Emilia.

"Mr. Abramovich's support makes things much easier, and now we can concentrate on our work instead of fund-raising problems," Ms. Kabakov said in an e-mail.

Forbes estimates the fortune of Mr. Abramovich, 41, at $23.5 billion, making him Russia's second-richest person and 15th in the world.

On April 30, the Norilsk-based Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation, controlled by billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, said it would give $2 million to be the Kabakov retrospective's main sponsor. On June 5, the foundation rescinded that pledge.

At the end of February, Mr. Kabakov became Russia's most expensive postwar artist when Phillips de Pury & Co. in London sold his 1982 painting "Beetle" for $5.8 million.