The exhibition entitled From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings was due to open at the Royal Academy of Arts on January 26 after the artworks had returned from an exhibition in the German city of Dusseldorf.
Natalia Uvarova, spokeswoman for the Russian Culture Agency, said the exhibition would not open in the U.K. as scheduled, and the paintings would most likely be brought back to Russia.
"The exhibition cannot go ahead in London at those dates, so the works will not go to Britain and are more likely to return to Russia. The issue is currently being settled," latest reports quoted Uvarova as saying.
The agency's head Mikhail Shvydkoi said earlier Russia would send the paintings to the U.K. as soon as the British government provided documents guaranteeing that the artworks cannot be seized in the country by any court order.
"The decision does not challenge an agreement intensifying cultural cooperation between Russia and Britain, but is dictated exclusively by the need to observe Russian law," Shvydkoi was quoted as saying.
The U.K. Ministry of Culture, Media and Sport said it "has done everything possible to facilitate the exhibition going ahead, including full assurances that the works would be protected from seizure."
Some say the dispute could be linked to political problems between Russia and Britain over the Alexander Litvinenko murder, which sparked a diplomatic row in the summer. And more recently the forced closure of two British Council offices in Russia from January 1, made by Russia's Foreign Ministry last week.
The exhibition involves Russia's four largest museums - the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum and the Tretyakov State Gallery in Moscow, and the Hermitage and the Russian Museum in St Petersburg. The paintings on display include works by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Renoir, Cezanne, Picasso, Kandinsky, Malevich, Petrov-Vodkin and other world-famous artists. Matisse's Dance commissioned by Sergei Shchukin in 1909 was expected to be the star of the show.
