$1 million painting damaged by security guard who drew eyes on it

The avant-garde artwork was created in the Soviet Union in the 1930s

The security guard is believed to have drawn on the valuable artwork by Anna Leporskaya during his first day on the job.

A valuable avant-garde artwork was defaced by a security guard who drew a pair of eyes on it during his shift at a Russian art gallery.

Three Figures, which was created by abstract painter Anna Leporskaya in the 1930s, is valued at 75 million roubles ($1 million) and was hanging at the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Centre in Yekaterinburg.

The gallery's director, Alexander Drozdov, said that the unnamed security guard, who was a contractor and in his 60s, used a ballpoint pen to draw on two of the figures.

The ink penetrated the paint but the pen did not apply heavy pressure, meaning that the brush strokes had not been damaged, according to a report in the Russian-language Art Newspaper.

“His motives are still unknown but the administration believes it was some kind of a lapse in sanity,” said the exhibition’s curator, Anna Reshetkina.

The alarm was first raised on December 7 by guests who told a gallery employee about the damage.

Experts believe that restoration to the painting, which had been on loan from the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, would cost 250,000 roubles ($3,300).

The gallery initially reported the incident in late December but police refused to launch an investigation, dismissing the damage as "insignificant".

But after Russia's culture ministry lodged a complaint with state prosecutors over the inaction, Yekaterinburg police launched a vandalism case.

The security guard has been questioned by local police.

The Yeltsin Centre is named after Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin, who was in office from 1991 until 1999.

Leporskaya, who lived from 1900-1982, was a student of Kazimir Malevich, a seminal Russian abstract artist best known for his 1915 work “Black Square.”