The National Gallery-Alexandros Soutsos Museum, in collaboration with MOMUS-Museum of Modern Art-Costakis Collection (Thessaloniki), presents the commemorative exhibition “The Avant – Garde World. City, Nature, Universe, Human” marking three decades since the first major public display of the Costakis Collection in Greece. This exhibition proposes a renewed reading of the Costakis Collection through the lens of the relationship between humans and their environment – a theme that emerged as a crucial field of artistic, philosophical, and scientific inquiry in early 20th-century Russia.
George Costakis was born in Moscow in 1913 to Greek parents from Zakynthos. He spent most of his life in Moscow, working as a driver at the Greek Embassy. Despite lacking formal training, Costakis developed a remarkable instinct for collecting early 20th-century Russian avant-garde art. He built close relationships with artists, their families, and artistic circles, and over more than thirty years assembled an extraordinary collection. At a time when avant-garde art was suppressed under Stalinist policies favoring Socialist Realism, he preserved works that might otherwise have been lost. He believed strongly in their future value and recognition. By the 1960s and 1970s, his Moscow apartment functioned as an informal museum of banned art. In 1977, he left the Soviet Union, donating 834 works to the Tretyakov Gallery. Costakis died in Athens in 1990, leaving a lasting legacy in modern art history.
The acquisition of 1,277 works from the Costakis Collection – the most important collection of Russian avant-garde art outside Russia – was completed by the Greek state in March 2000 and assigned by decision of the Ministry of Culture to the newly founded State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki. In November 2018, the institution evolved into the Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki (MOMUS). Following the acquisition, the Costakis family donated the collector’s archive to the museum, comprising more than 2,000 valuable items – including manuscripts, publications, photographs, posters, artists’ notebooks, and drawings. The Costakis Collection and Archive, renowned for their scope, mobility and historical value, contribute decisively to the understanding of this pivotal chapter in the history of modernism.
