Roman Abramovich to spend £250 million on St Petersburg art museum project

Abramovich's girlfriend Daria Zhukova, who converted the football-loving oligarch to the joys of art, will play her own role in overseeing the gallery.

While best known in Britain for acquiring footballers, Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club, has quietly established himself as the world's leading collector of modern and contemporary art thanks to Miss Zhukova's influence.

He has now splashed out 12 billion roubles (about £250 million) buying the crumbling buildings on New Holland island, a 300-year-old former military base which belonged to the Russian admiralty. Abramovich plans to transform the 18th century warehouses into a cultural and commercial centre in Russia's old imperial capital.

The plans will include space for galleries and a museum, including a possible permanent home for Abramovich's own art collection, which has been acquired with Miss Zhukova's guiding hand.

A source close to Abramovich told the Sunday Telegraph: "There is a plan for traditional art spaces and cultural spaces within the complex. Daria will be involved."

Abramovich announced his arrival on the art scene in 2008 after spending £60 million in just 24 hours at two auctions in New York. He first spent £17 million on a painting by Lucien Freud - the most ever spent on a work by a living artist - and then followed it up the next night with the £43 million purchase of Francis Bacon's Triptych, 1976 - a record for the artist and a record for any contemporary art work.

It is not clear what other major works Abramovich, who is deeply private, has spent his money on but ARTnews, the world's oldest fine arts magazine, named the oligarch in the summer as one of the world's top 10 art collectors based on intelligence gathered from auction houses, art dealers, curators and other experts.

Abramovich owes his interest in contemporary art to Miss Zhukova, his girlfriend for the past three years and the mother of the youngest of his six children. The oligarch divorced his second wife Irina in 2007 - paying her a settlement in the region of £150 million. Miss Zhukova - known as Dasha to friends - has since become a permanent fixture in his life. Miss Zhukova, who at 29 is 15 years' Abramovich's junior, runs her own gallery - the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture (GCCC)- in Moscow. Set up in a former bus garage, it is said to have been paid for by Abramovich.

Miss Zhukova, who is the daughter of a Russian oil magnate and is independently wealthy of her boyfriend, is also a member of the board of trustees of Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The art gallery being considered in St Petersburg, historically Russia's cultural and artistic capital and already home to The Hermitage, would be on a much grander scale than Miss Zhukova's GCCC, which stages high profile, rotating exhibitions. The source pointed out that "the Garage doesn't house a permanent collection".

It would offer Abramovich the opportunity to leave his legacy in much the same way that J. Paul Getty left his with a museum for his art works in Los Angeles.

Abramovich, who is worth about £7.5 billion, has huge spending power in the art market, easily dwarfing possible rivals such as Charles Saatchi, worth just a few hundred million pounds and who has his own eponymous gallery in central London.

The bid to run the island was won by Abramovich less than a fortnight ago through a new venture called New Holland Development. The newly formed company will now invite architects to bid for the contract to transform the 18-acre island, which will take about six years to complete.

Abramovich's spokesman John Mann said: "It will be a multi-functional complex of offices, housing, retail, galleries and hotels. We are now working on partners and architects.

"It is great for the city of St petersburg. It is a new centre of business, commerce and culture right in the middle of town.. It's great for the city. It is a great project for us to involved in."

The decision to go to tender for new designs will be a blow to Lord Foster, one of Britain's leading architects, who won a previous bid to revamp the island only for the consortium then running it to get into difficulty. Abramovich, who met with St Petersburg's governor Valentina Matviyenko last week to discuss the new project, has already concluded Lord Foster's design was too modern for the island.

New Holland island was created in the 18th century through the construction of two canals and gains it name from its resemblance to areas of Amsterdam.

The island is the latest of Abramovich's lavish spending sprees. In September last year he brought a £54 million 70-acre estate on St Barts in the most expensive deal ever for a Caribbean island. He also spent a reported £300million on the world's biggest private yacht, Eclipse. The yacht is so large, it too has its own art gallery.

Cristina Ruiz, the Art Newspaper's editor at large, said: "Before Dasha, Abramovich's name never came up in the art world. I don't think he bought art at all. But as soon as she came on the scene he started buying art. We have no idea exactly what he has bought and how much he has spent but I would expect him to have bought jackson Pollocks and Mark Rothkos as well as Freuds and Bacons."