About

George Costakis was an outstanding collector and art patron who gathered a landmark collection of Russian avant-garde and Soviet underground artists. Before emigrating to Greece in 1977, he donated a substantial part of the works in his possession to the Tretyakov Gallery and the Andrey Rublev Museum of Ancient Russian Culture and Art, which made him one of the greatest Russian philanthropists of the 20th century. In the 1950s, he was one of the first collectors to support A. Zverev, purchasing and publicizing his work.
A message from Aliki Costakis.
The idea of creating a website about G.D. Costakis did not come to me overnight. Heaps of materials: photographs, letters, press clippings have been calling me to action for many years. The story of a difficult life of my father, full of joy, sadness, and sometimes tragic events, should be brought to you by those who knew him, loved him, and valued him. There are quite a few of us in this project: three generations of the family (daughter, granddaughter, great-grandson) and two museums that are directly related to Costakis: AZ Museum (Moscow) and MOMus (Thessaloniki).
I also would like to thank all the people who agreed to take part in this project, which will be constantly updated with new materials. I hope that this site will become a homage to a person who made an invaluable contribution to Russian art of the 20th century, which, thanks to him, became known worldwide.