Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Steel billionaire Victor Pinchuk said he was one of the buyers of Damien Hirst's works at a Sotheby's auction in London earlier this month.

Pinchuk spoke in an interview as he named Eckhard Schneider director of his Kiev art center. The Ukrainian's collection includes some of the most expensive living artists: Hirst, Jeff Koons and German photographer Andreas Gursky.

``Victor Pinchuk is having a great impact on the market,'' said Simon de Pury, chairman of the auction house Phillips de Pury & Co., at the opening of a Gursky show at the center. ``Ever since he opened the center, others in Ukraine and Russia have emulated him and taken an interest in contemporary art.''

Demand from Russia and former Soviet republics is supporting the art market and accounts for almost 50 percent of sales at Gagosian Gallery, the global leader in art exhibition space, one of its directors said this month. Buyers from the region and from the Middle East were more active than those from the U.S. at the Hirst auction, where 223 lots fetched 111.5 million pounds ($199 million), art dealers said.

``Over the past year, I've acquired works by my favorite artists,'' said Pinchuk in his downtown Kiev home. ``I bought Gursky, Koons, Murakami, Hirst, and Kiefer. Yes, I bought at the recent Hirst auction, but I won't name works. You must wait until spring when I'll display new acquisitions.''

Schneider, a former director of the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria, replaces Dmitri Logvin, who is now the Pinchuk museum's executive director.

Pinchuk's Fortune

Pinchuk said he headhunted Schneider, impressed by the shows of contemporary art he curated in Bregenz, a town in the Alps where Austria, Germany and Switzerland meet. In May, Forbes estimated Pinchuk's fortune at $5 billion.

Pinchuk, son-in-law of former Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma, built his wealth from Interpipe, Ukraine's biggest producer of steel pipes for oil and gas companies, as well as TV stations, and steelmaker VAT Dniprospetsstal.

``Many wealthy people want to amass a trove of art treasures to stash away, but Victor Pinchuk has a vision to share his collection with society,'' said Schneider in an interview in Kiev. ``This is why I want to work with him.''

The Pinchuk Center displays works owned by the steel magnate and those from other private collections. The latest show has 24 photos by Gursky and 18 video works loaned by Julia Stoschek, one of five owners of the Coburg, Germany-based car- parts maker Brose Fahrzeugteile GmbH & Co.

Pinchuk owns nine of the works in the Gursky show, and eight were acquired over the past year, according to the catalog. Gursky, represented by White Cube in London, holds the record for the most expensive photo at auction. The White Cube owner, Jay Jopling, attended Pinchuk's Gursky opening.

The Pinchuk Center opened in September 2006 as the first private museum of contemporary art in the former Soviet Union. Since then, it has had 300,000 visitors.

``The contemporary art market in both Ukraine and Russia has really taken off in the past two years, and I expect this growth to continue,'' De Pury of Phillips said.

(John Varoli writes for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: John Varoli in St. Petersburg at jvaroli@gmail.com.

Last Updated: September 29, 2008 20:56 EDT