A 60-year-old Russian security guard has reportedly caused thousands of dollars in damage to a $1.3 million painting by drawing eyes on it during his very first day on the job. Anna Reshetkina, the curator of the exhibition at the Yelstin Center in Yekaterinburg, said administrators were still baffled by the security guard’s decision to add eyes “with a Yeltsin Center-branded pen” to Anna Leporskaya’s Three Figures, which was on loan from the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. “His motives are still unknown but the administration believes it was some kind of a lapse in sanity,” Reshetkina said in a statement. Restoration of the painting is expected to cost around $4,600. The unnamed security guard, who vanished after his attempt to “perfect” the painting, is now facing vandalism charges, according to Russian media reports. Ilya Shipilovskikh, the deputy director of the center, told Moskovsky Komsomolets the security guard was hospitalized shortly after the act of vandalism, noting that “apparently this has all affected him greatly.”
