A selection from the worldwide admired and famous George Costakis collection from the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, will be presented for the first time in Italy.

The exhibition “Russian Avant-garde from Malevich to Rodchenko. Works from the Costakis collection” will open in Palazzo Chiablese, in the center of Turin on October 3 2014 and will remain in display until February 15, 2015.

George Costakis was born in Moscow in 1913 in a Greek family. He worked as a driver for the Greek embassy until 1940 and after the War he found job at the Canadian embassy. He ignored the aesthetic prohibitions of his time, which considered the avant-garde movements as decadent remnants of the bourgeoisie and decided to methodically collect Russian and Soviet experimental art from the turn of the century until the 1930s thus saving from destruction this vital component of the 20th century.

He met the artists that were still alive and was in contact with families and friends of those who had died and gave rise to a remarkable collection, which until 1977 kept in his Moscow apartment in Vernadskii Avenue. His home was like an extraordinary private museum, a school for the younger generation and a friendly meeting place of intellectuals, artists and personalities from around the world. Igor Stravinsky, Marc Chagall, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Nina Kandinsky, Edward Kennedy and David Rockefeller were among the guests.

In 1977 George Costakis left the Soviet Union after leaving a part of his collection at the State Tretyakov Gallery. He lived for one year in Rome and then moved to Athens where he died in 1990. In 2000 the Greek Ministry of Culture bought 1277 works from his collection, which became the core of the collection of the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, Greece.

The exhibition "Russian Avant-garde from Malevich to Rodchenko. Works from the Costakis Collection", with about three hundred works of art and archival material on display including paintings, gouaches, watercolors, documents, photographs as well as a group of drawings of constructivist architecture, is presented in an encyclopedic way. They represent all the major movements of that period (from the New Impressionism and Symbolism to Cubofuturism, Suprematism and Constructivism) with masterpieces of the greatest Russian Avant-garde artists like Malevich, Popova, Rodchenko, Rozanova, El Lissitzky, Stepanova, Tatlin and others.

The exhibition is curated by Maria Tsantsanoglou, director of the SMCA and an expert in the field of Russian avant-garde and Angelica Charistou, the curator of the Costakis collection at the SMCA.

The exhibition, which is for the first time presented in Italy, is supported by the Regional Directorate for Cultural Heritage and Landscape of Piemonte and from the Municipality of Turin and was coordinated and organized by Skira Editions and the Global Village International with the close collaboration of the State Museum Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki. It is accompanied by a valuable catalogue published by Skira Editions with essays by John E. Bowlt, Angelica Charistou, Nicoletta Misler and Maria Tsantsanoglou.

It was his rare aesthtetic instinct and the accidental encounter with a painting of Olga Rozanova in 1946 that led George Costakis to the decision to form a collection of Russian experimental art of the early twentieth century and thus save this important period of 20th century art from destruction. For nearly three decades he methodically collected everything that was related with the period of Russian avant-garde: paintings, drawings but also archival material including documents, books and photographs.

It was not an easy choice. As Costakis states in his autobiography: "Among the circle of collectors in Moscow I had a nickname that was not very flattering. I was the mad Greek that collects useless junk."

Maria Tsantsanoglou, director of the State Museum of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki writes that “after 1934, the Russian avant-garde artists were considered as "formalists" and "formalism” - in a time when painters and sculptors were required to represent and propagate the ideals of the new Soviet society following the aesthetic method of Socialist Realism, was a charge equal to national treason."

Only in the eighties, when Costakis had settled in Greece, the collection became world famous thanks, in particular, to the 1981 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, where for the first time the collection was restored and cataloged.

"If one day this phenomenon will be discovered the world will be surprised” said Costakis in an interview in 1983.

The Costakis collection represents all periods and trends of the avant-garde and almost all artists, contributing significantly to the understanding of this great aesthetic phenomenon of the 20th century. There are certain focalizations in the collection, like the big number of paintings and drawings by the great artist Liubov’ Popova, who died prematurely in 1924, by Ivan Kliun, a friend of Malevich who proposed his own version of Suprematism and Gustav Klucis who attempts to combine painting with architecture with his series of "axonometric drawings".

Important part of the collection include the many paintings and drawings by Solomon Nikritin, artist of the second generation and founder of the movement of projectionist; the works of the Ender siblings, which are essential for understanding the applications in art of the theories on the fourth dimension and the organic relationship between art, nature and biology; a series of early paintings by Aleksandr Rodchenko, a leading figure of the constructivist movement, that were made between 1919 and 1921; the porcelain collection by artists such as Nikolai Suetin, Natan Altman and especially Wassily Kandinsky as well as books designed by different artists of the Russian avant including Malevich, Popova, Filonov, Rozanova and Klucis, significant evidences of the attempts made by avant-garde artists to have an impact on mass production.

The exhibition presents certain seminal works of the Russian avant-garde, like Malevich’s “Portrait” dated from 1910, Popova’s “Travelling Woman” from 1915, a rare example of Cubo-futurism with influences from Italian futurism and Rodchenko’s “Expressive Rhythm” from 1943-44, a balanced composition made with drops and splashes of colours which creates a dynamic rhythm and motion that leads to an inevitable confrontation with abstract expressionism and action painting. Finally the original strut-wing of the “Letatlin” by Vladimir Tatlin, one of the most daring and bizarre utopian works of art of the 20th century.

In the catalogue of the historic exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1981, the curator Margit Rowell wrote that when they opened the crates of the collection, and saw the works from the Costakis collection, she felt that the history of the avant-garde needs to be rewritten.

Spazio Mostre Polo Reale

Palazzo Chiablese, Piazzetta Reale
Turin 10122 Italy
Ph. +39 011 5790095
info@mostracostakis.it
www.mostracostakis.it

Opening hours

Daily from 10.00am to 7.30pm
Friday from 10.00am to 10.30pm
Tuesday closed

Admission

€12,00 Full Price
€9,50 Concessions

Related images
  1. Aleksandr Rodchenko-Abstraction Rupture, late 1920s, oil on canvas, © State Museum of Contemporary Art-Costakis collection / Thessaloniki
  2. George Costakis in his apartment. photo Igor Palmin, © State Museum of Contemporary Art-Costakis collection / Thessaloniki
  3. Liubov Popova, Travelling Woman, oil on canvas, 1915, © State Museum of Contemporary Art-Costakis collection / Thessaloniki
  4. Liubov Popova, portrait oil on paperboard, 1914-15, © State Museum of Contemporary Art-Costakis collection / Thessaloniki
  5. The collector George Costakis, photo Henri Cartier-Bersson, © State Museum of Contemporary Art-Costakis collection / Thessaloniki
  6. Aleksei Morgunov, Standing Figure (Aviator), oil on canvas, 1912-13, © State Museum of Contemporary Art-Costakis collection / Thessaloniki