Wlodzimierz Umaniec AKA Vladimir Umanets admits defacing Mark Rothko painting at London's Tate Modern

A
man has admitted defacing a Mark Rothko painting at London's Tate Modern
gallery after it was graffitied with black paint.

Wlodzimierz Umaniec, 26, pleaded guilty today at Camberwell Green Magistrates' Court to causing criminal damage to property valued at over £5,000.

Polish national Umaniec, of Worthing, West Sussex, was released on conditional bail and will be sentenced at Inner London Crown Court at a later date.

His bail conditions stipulate that he must not go to the Tate Modern.

Witnesses reported seeing a man paint on Rothko’s Black on Maroon piece at the gallery on October 7.

The graffiti read: “Vladimir Umanets, A Potential Piece of Yellowism”.

Umaniec also goes by the name Vladimir Umanets and said in an interview before he was charged that he was one founders of "Yellowism", a movement he described as "neither art, nor anti-art".

Museum conservators hope that the artwork, which was one of a series, known as the Seagram murals, gifted to the Tate by the artist in 1969 and which is potentially worth tens of millions of pounds, can be cleaned and restored.