Moscow ? A famous painting of a plain black square by avant-garde artist Kasimir Malevich was expected to fetch millions of dollars at auction but it was snatched off the block by Russia’s Culture Ministry, which deemed it too precious to sell.

The “Black Square,” painted in 1913, was to be the featured lot at Saturday’s auction of art owned by bankrupt Russian bank Inkombank.

But as preparations for the auction mounted, the ministry declared the painting a state cultural monument and ordered it removed from the auction list, according to a ministry statement released Saturday.

“The ministry decided to keep this (painting) for the state,” ministry official Anatoly Vilkov said on state-run RTR television.

Two other Malevich works were sold Saturday. “Self-Portrait” went for $600,000 and “Portrait of the Artist’s Wife” went for $90,000, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

“Black Square” remained at the renowned Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, where it had been sent for valuation before the sale, Gelos officials said. In place of the original black square, Gelos displayed a copy of the painting center stage during the auction.

The 21-square-inch painting on a white canvas was long believed destroyed before the now-defunct Inkombank acquired it in the 1990s. It is one of four known versions of Malevich’s trademark Suprematist square; the other three belong to Russian museums.

The ministry said it has the right of first purchase of the painting, though it was unclear how much it would have to pay or what it planned to do with it.