About George Costakis
George Costakis (Russian: Георгий Дионисович Костаки, Greek: Γεώργιος Κωστάκης, 5 July 1913 - 9 March 1990) was a Greek-Russian art collector who amassed one of the largest private collections of Russian avant-garde art in the world. In the years surrounding the 1917 revolution, artists in Russia produced the first non-figurative art, which was to become the defining art of the 20th century. Costakis by chance discovered some constructivist paintings in a Moscow studio in 1946, and he went on to search for the revolutionary art which might otherwise have been lost to the world. At first he worked as a driver for the Greek Embassy until 1939, when relationships between Russia and Greece broke down due to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
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