“Kostaki himself was stunned by the Russian avant-garde - by what he discovered and collected. How, in the era of the USSR, a collector of Greek origin Georgy Kostaki managed to collect a unique collection of the Russian-Soviet avant-garde, which had no equal in the world Zinaida Semen

The name of George Kostaki is inextricably linked with the history of the Russian avant-garde of the 1910s-1930s. Malevich, Kandinsky, Chagall, Rodchenko, Klyun, Popova, Filonov - these are just a few of the most prominent names, in reality, the Costakis collection, collected in the 40s - 70s of the last century, contained works by dozens of artists, many of whom otherwise would be forgotten. A self-taught collector who became a true connoisseur of art forgotten in the Soviet Union, Kostaki devoted his life to preserving the names of its artists for Russia. Kostaki's collection was so huge in value and size that when, before the forced emigration in 1978, he donated most of the works to the Tretyakov Gallery, the rest was enough for a whole museum in Greece. His daughter Aliki Kostaki told RIA Novosti about the life and work of the collector. Interviewed by Alexei Bogdanovsky.

Collector's way

George Costakis died in 1990 at the age of 76. We are sitting with Aliki Costakis in her house on the northern outskirts of Athens, in the same living room where the elderly and ill Georgy Dionisovich once lay, looking out of the window at the slopes of Mount Pentelikon.

"He was a passionate person. Whatever he did - he caught fish, planted trees, he did everything like crazy. He also took up the avant-garde when he stumbled upon a vein, almost unknown to anyone," says Aliki.

Born in Russia, a Greek, Georgy Kostaki worked in the embassies of Western countries in Moscow - first as a driver, then as an administrator. The passion for collecting started early in his life; from the "small Dutch", silver, porcelain, he moved on to tapestries, later - to icons. In the early post-war years, Costakis accidentally saw a painting by Olga Rozanova "The Green Stripe" at a friend's place and fell ill with the avant-garde.

From the Stalin years, when the collection began, to Khrushchev's swearing at artists and the "Bulldozer Exhibition" of the 70s, collecting contemporary art was unsafe and contrary to official ideology. But even more than the hostility of the authorities, oblivion threatened this art.

In the Western press, the collector was repeatedly reproached for paying relatively little money for art that is now worth millions. However, we should not forget that the administrator of the Canadian embassy could not have the financial resources of the official artists, songwriters and other rich people who collected art favored by the authorities. Those who remember Kostaki talk about how he supported financially young artists, relatives of the departed masters.

But the main thing - the works of the avant-garde in those days had no price, because they were considered garbage, not seeing any value in them. “They almost laughed at him. Nobody believed in it, because they believed that he was collecting garbage, that it would never be recognized and appreciated, that he was just doing some kind of devilry,” says Aliki Costakis.

One of the works of Lyubov Popova, a large plywood sheet, Kostaki discovered in Zvenigorod near Moscow: a window opening was filled with a picture. The daughter of Georgy Dionisovich recalls: “They didn’t give her away because there was nothing to board up the window with. Father went to work: thank God, there were boxes there. He asked the janitors to cut a sheet of plywood, went and gave this piece, and in return received Popova.”

Museum in the apartment

When the collection became known in the 1960s and 1970s, it was said that Costakis had a unique flair for high class pieces. This instinct was especially valuable in the years when there was no recognition of the avant-garde in the Soviet Union, and in the West as well. Georgy Dionisovich also had that entrepreneurial streak that every collector needs: after all, he acquired a significant part of his works through exchange, and these were sometimes very clever deals.

However, collecting paintings was not an end in itself for him. Kostaki sought to show these works to people. "That was his mission. He not only collected this collection, but also showed that we had a house-museum. People came to us from nine in the morning almost until nightfall. And he never refused anyone, even some to a boy from the village ... I never said: I'm busy, I'm sick, - says Aliki Costakis. - I came home from work one evening. I open the elevator. The uncle is sitting. He has a table, and he, with a list in his hands, asks me : What's your last name? It was 90 people from the architectural institute."

Students, artists came to Costakis' apartment, then Western art critics, curators, politicians and just celebrities came to the apartment: from Svyatoslav Richter to Igor Stravinsky, from Marc Chagall to Edward Kennedy. Gradually, Costakis' house became a Moscow landmark, and the Soviet authorities could hardly have liked it.

Costakis initially sought to transfer his collection to the state, but on the condition that it be exhibited. "My children don't like darkness, they love light," he said of the paintings.

Aliki Kostaki recalls that back in the 60s, Georgy Dionisovich spoke with the Minister of Culture of the USSR Ekaterina Furtseva about an unthinkable thing at that time: to create a museum of modern art in Moscow, to which he could donate his collection.

Costakis conceived a second similar project in the early 1970s with the director of the Russian Museum in Leningrad, Vasily Pushkarev. "They were preparing a scam - to transport the collection to the Russian Museum in Leningrad, hang it on the walls without prior notice, but in no case transfer it to the basements ... It seems that they and Pushkarev could agree on this, like two boys," recalls Aliki Costakis. However, this plan also failed: Georgy Dionisovich was well aware that for this his friend would be removed from the leadership of the museum, and the paintings would go to a dusty storeroom, where he would least like to see them.

"This should belong to Russia"

Friction Costakis with the Soviet authorities, although he tried his best to avoid clashes, gradually increased. A collector of unofficial art, a direct and open person, he was a thorn in the side of many. Aliki Costakis recalls that the persecution began with the 1974 destruction of the "Bulldozer Exhibition" of contemporary artists by the authorities. "For art, it was like a bloody Sunday. He then approached some official and said:" What are you doing, you are worse than the Nazis! .

The apartment was robbed twice, Kandinsky's works disappeared; they set fire to the dacha, from where the wonderful icons disappeared. Costakis began to fear for himself and his children.

The way out of this situation was a deal between the collector and the authorities - he donated about 80% of his collection to the Tretyakov Gallery, and in exchange he could go abroad, leaving himself a small part of the work to feed his family. "Nobody wanted to leave, we didn't think that we would ever leave. It was very hard for my father to give away the collection, to share it," says Aliki Costakis. For each collector, the collection is his life, and Georgy Dionisovich called the paintings his children.

When the specialists of the Tretyakov Gallery came to accept the paintings, Costakis gave them the best of his colossal collection of more than two thousand works. Aliki Kostaki says: “A relatively small part of the works ended up in the West. Their number was large, but the most significant remained in Russia. Such as Malevich’s Portrait of Matyushin, the Tatlin relief, the huge double-sided works of Popova, Kandinsky’s Red Square. All this he selected and said: "This should remain in Russia."

The idea that he was only the custodian of the art, which should later belong to Russia, guided the actions of Costakis even when he was actually forced to abandon the collection and emigrate. "He had some strange patriotism," Vitaly Manin, deputy director of the Tretyakov Gallery, who helped transfer the collection, said of Costakis.

Thus, the collector told the gallery workers which works to take, leaving the best for them. "The well-known art critic Dmitry Sarabyanov said that he could outdo any art critic on his subject," explains Aliki Costakis.

Kostaki himself said in an interview for the biographical book of Peter Roberts: "I managed to collect these things that were lost, forgotten, thrown away by the authorities, I saved them, and this is my merit. But this does not mean that they belong to me or those who I will give them as a gift. They belong to Russia, they must belong to the people of Russia."

As Lidia Iovleva, deputy general director for science of the State Tretyakov Gallery, later said, “it can be said without exaggeration that since the time of Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov there has not been such a generous donor in Russia, a more extensive collection of Russian avant-garde of the 1910-1920s, which was collected and donated to the Tretyakovskaya gallery by the famous Russian Greek".

After leaving, Costakis settled in Greece. Here, in the historical homeland of George Dionisovich and after his death, the fate of the rest of the collection was finally decided.

Costakis and Greece

When George Dionisovich died in 1990, his daughter, in collaboration with the Greek curator Anna Kafetsi, began to prepare a major exhibition at the Athens Pinakothek. This exhibition took place in 1995-96 and enjoyed great success, which largely determined the future fate of the collection. A two-volume catalog was prepared for the exposition, describing the collection in every detail.

Evangelos Venizelos, former Minister of Culture of Greece, decided that the Costakis collection should be acquired by the Greek state. This happened in 2000.

I asked Aliki Kostaki how it happened that Greece, which did not have its own avant-garde traditions, decided to purchase the collection. "Because he was a Greek. Only because of that, not even because it was the Russian avant-garde. Of course, it was the Russian avant-garde, which became very famous, which went around the world with exhibitions, and at the Royal Academy, and at the Guggenheim, in famous museums. The collection had a name, yes, but he was a Greek, and for the Greeks it was extremely important."

Now the Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki has been created for the collection, which is managed by art critic and researcher of Russian contemporary painting Maria Tsantsanoglu, who has spent many years in Russia. Now, almost unexpectedly for itself, Greece has turned out to be an "exporter" of the Russian avant-garde: exhibitions of the Costakis collection are still held all over the world with great success. Unfortunately, the Russian, more significant part of the collection is not yet exhibited as a whole.

When she first looked at the Costakis collection, art historian Margit Rowell said: "The history of art in the 20th century must be rewritten." Alika Costakis' dream remains to organize an exhibition of works stored in Russia and Greece for the centenary of her father in 2013. This is hindered by a number of legal subtleties: in the hands of the Costakis' heirs, only the acts of transferring the works to the Tretyakov Gallery, but not the official decision of the Central Committee on the transfer of the collection, remained in the hands of the heirs of Costakis, while the acquisition by Greece of part of the works should also be properly documented in Russia. All this would help to avoid legal uncertainty and temporarily reunite the famous collection under one roof.

Greece and Russia are connected by the Orthodox religion, a centuries-old history of friendly relations. In the last decade, this was supplemented by the collection of Costakis, a man who over-stubborn not only his fellow art historians, who denied the avant-garde future success, but also the era itself, which was hostile to this art. Before recognition came to dozens of names of the Russian avant-garde, Georgy Kostaki gathered these artists bit by bit, literally saving their work from complete oblivion and destruction. Now his collection, although divided between the two countries, retains its internal integrity and is not yet fully open: for example, few visitors to the Tretyakov Gallery are aware of the scale of the contribution of Georgy Costakis, and for many a separate exhibition of the collection would be a revelation.

The well-known British artist, Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller said in an interview that the exhibition of works from the Costakis collection he saw at the Royal Academy of London made a huge impression on him and predetermined his further artistic path. There is no doubt that the Russian audience deserves such impressions.

"I understand that my father's name will not be forgotten, but a little more should be done for this," Aliki Costakis concluded.

In 1932, George married Zinaida Panfilova, with whom he had three daughters and a son, as well as a huge collection of Russian avant-garde paintings.

By the end of the 1930s, World War II was brewing in Europe. Diplomatic conflicts began between the USSR and Greece. As a result, the Greek embassy in Moscow was closed and Kostaki was forced to change jobs. First he worked as a watchman at the Finnish embassy, ​​then at the Swedish embassy. And by 1944, George received the post of administrator at the Canadian Embassy. From some sources it was known that his salary at that time was $ 2,000. That's the money he spent on buying exhibits for his collection.

And he started back in the early 30s, when he was a simple driver, whose duties included transporting foreign diplomats. And they were very fond of stopping by commission stores, where antiques were handed over by capital citizens. George soon got his bearings and, having learned to understand painting and antiques, he began to buy paintings by Dutch masters for next to nothing, as well as porcelain, silver, carpets, furniture ...

And somehow, in the late 40s, he accidentally saw several creations of Russian avant-garde artists in one of the Moscow apartments and realized that this was exactly what he needed. And Costakis, like a man possessed, began to collect the avant-garde. And this was at a time when there were officially no other trends in art in the Union except for socialist realism. The strictest ban was imposed on all other directions. Many began to call George a "crazy Greek", but nothing could convince or stop him.

Previously collected paintings of the "Dutch", antique furniture, silverware - everything was exchanged for a little-understood avant-garde. But, for Costakis himself, there was no other art other than this.

“And so I bought avant-garde paintings, brought them home and hung them next to the Dutch. And there was a feeling that I lived in a room with curtained windows, and now they were flung open and the sun burst into them. From that moment on, I decided to part with everything that he managed to collect, and acquire only the avant-garde. It happened in 1946" Costakis recalled.

And it should be noted that the wife, who devoted herself entirely to her husband and children, fully supported the collector. Sometimes it got to the point that George had to pay for the paintings with his wife's fur coats, which he brought from trips abroad. Promising, at the same time, to compensate with new ones.

And sometimes the paintings accidentally fell into the hands of a collector, for which they didn’t even ask for money. So, the creation of the avant-garde artist Lyubov Popova boarded up a window at the dacha of her relatives. And, as soon as Costakis delivered a piece of plywood in return, the owners immediately removed it from the window and gave the collector an invaluable creation for him.

Georgy Dionisievich had another passion - these are icons, which he became interested in in his youth. The collector took over his interest in church painting from his father, a deeply religious person. It was he who dedicated his son to his shrines, talking a lot about how the Greeks saved them in the first place during the wars. And somehow he and his father happened to find a box with icons and crosses in the basement of the embassy in the wind-breaking 1920s. The found treasure was carefully kept by the son and father of Costakis for many years. And shortly before his death, my father smuggled a box of icons to Greece. And surprisingly, in extreme old age, George saw them again in one of the temples of Greece, where at the end of his life he went with his family.

All this will be later, but for now, George, living in Moscow and hoping that someday his collection of paintings will be put on public display to the Russian people, continued to collect forbidden art. And of course, there was no hope that the authorities would take such a step. Therefore, both the apartment and the collector's country house gradually turned into an unofficial museum, where ordinary Muscovites, great connoisseurs, artists, metropolitan celebrities and foreign dignitaries came.

But in 1976 disaster struck at Costakis' country house. In a fire, as a result of arson, a considerable number of precious paintings perished. Then there was a robbery of a Moscow apartment, where valuable paintings also disappeared. Everything pointed to the fact that the authorities could not in any way allow the existence of even a private museum of forbidden avant-garde painting and thus wanted to rein in its owner.

This was followed by pressure from employees of the embassy, ​​where 63-year-old Costakis still worked. They began to tell him in plain text that it was time to retire. At night, phone calls were heard from unknown people with threats. “The moment has come when living with such a collection in Moscow has become not only uncomfortable, but dangerous”, - from the memories of those troubled times of the collector's daughter.

Goodbye Russia!

Georgy Costakis became alarmed for himself and his family and wrote an appeal to General Secretary Brezhnev with a request to be allowed to leave the country. In response, there was silence for a long time, apparently the officials were deciding on what conditions to release the Greek collector. A year later, in 1977, permission was obtained, and the collector left Russia with part of his collection.

According to unofficial data, the departure of Costakis was forced - the ruling authorities could no longer endure the existence in the country of such a huge collection of paintings of forbidden art. And the main condition for permission to leave was the requirement to donate part of the collection to the Tretyakov Gallery. Kostaki understood that he would not be able to leave in any other way, so he left most of his collection to Moscow.

The collector was consoled by the fact that at least in this way his dream would come true: this part would still be seen by the Russians, who rightfully own a piece of their history.
art.

But this will happen only 30 years later, when an exhibition of works collected by Costakis will be organized in the Tretyakov Gallery, namely, on the 100th anniversary of his birth. And the Russians finally saw what the Greek eccentric devoted his whole life to.

The exported part of the collection to Greece was immediately exhibited in the Dusseldorf Museum in Germany. In the next two years, the paintings traveled around France, exhibited at the Pompidou Center. Then, throughout the 80s, the works of Russian avant-garde artists were exhibited in New York, Houston, Ottawa, Indianapolis, Chicago, Stockholm, London, Helsinki, Montreal.

And the great collector died in 1990, never having lived to see the landmark event, to which he had been going all his life. In 1995, in the National Gallery of the capital of Greece, for the first time after the separation, the two parts of the Russian avant-garde collection, which thundered throughout the world, were temporarily reunited. The world has finally seen the creations of persecuted Russian artists in a complete collection.

In 2018, fans of the unique collector Georgy Dionisovich Kostaki celebrate the 105th anniversary of his birth. He rightfully occupies an honorable place among those who made a huge contribution to the preservation of the works of Russian avant-garde artists of the 20th century.

magic picture

The future owner of the richest collection was born in Moscow on July 5, 1913 in the family of a merchant with Greek roots. In the 1930s, he worked as a driver in the embassies of Western countries and often took diplomatic workers to antique shops. I watched with interest how they buy antiques wholesale and retail, how they are happy with every purchase.

He listened to their stories about great artists, sculptors, jewelers, furniture makers - and gradually he became involved in collecting. Art objects fascinated and attracted him.

The father strongly supported his son's hobby and even allocated him certain funds for the purchase of antiques. Inspired by the support, Georgy began to collect paintings of the Old Dutch, porcelain, bronze, Russian silver, carpets, tapestries and fabrics. But all the time he thought that if he continued in the same spirit, he would not bring anything new to the history of art. Everything that he collected was presented in the Louvre, the Hermitage, other major museums and in rich private collections. And the vain young man wanted to do something original, extraordinary, epoch-making and certainly stand out from the crowd of ordinary collectors.

In the summer of 1946, George was invited to the cozy apartment of a Moscow art collector, and there he first saw three avant-garde paintings. One of them - the brushes of Olga Rozanova - made a magical impression on him. It was called "Green Stripe". The young man stood in front of her for half an hour, as if nailed by some unknown force.

After drinking tea with the hostess, George left the hospitable dwelling, more reminiscent of a museum, but his thoughts again and again returned to the work of art he had seen. Somehow, with a sixth sense, I realized that it is of great value and will live for centuries. He made a lot of efforts to buy this work, and at the same time - and two other avant-garde paintings.

Forced confiscation

Kostaki brought the paintings home and hung them next to the Dutch creations. He formulated his impressions as follows: “I had the feeling that I used to live in a room with curtained windows, but now they are wide open. The bright Moscow sun and the fresh wind of change burst into them.

From that day on, he firmly decided to part with everything that he managed to acquire, and henceforth to acquire only the Russian avant-garde.

Among the artistic intelligentsia, the nickname Greek Eccentric was firmly entrenched in him, because at that time the official authorities of the USSR recognized only works made in the spirit of socialist realism. Everything else was ruthlessly rejected, subjected to harsh criticism and complete rejection.

All Costakis' efforts to collect the avant-garde collection were fully supported by his beloved wife Zinaida. Seeing her in the house of acquaintances, nineteen-year-old George fell in love at first sight and did everything to win the beauty's heart. The rapprochement was also facilitated by the fact that Zina sang beautifully, and Georgy masterfully accompanied her on the guitar. The creative duet quite harmoniously turned into a family one.
A year after the wedding, Zinaida gave birth to her first child. Five years later, the family had four children - three daughters and a son.

Zinaida dreamed of becoming a doctor, but Georgy said harshly: “Your business is to raise children and run a household, and mine is to provide for a family!”

The wife resignedly obeyed the dictatorship, and she also fully shared her husband's passion. It got to the point that when he had to pay for some picture, and there was no money in the house, he said: “Zina, get a fur coat out of the closet. The one I brought from Paris."
This happened more than once or twice: he brought her a fur coat from abroad and after some time “confiscated” this fur coat, sold it and bought paintings by young authors with the proceeds, who were later called nonconformists and whose works soared in price by dozens. and hundreds of times.

But Zinaida never took offense at the "confiscation". She saw how much "sacred delight" the next acquisition brings to her husband, and she rejoiced for him. As for the fur coat - this is a business!

Place of attraction

And the Costakis collection, meanwhile, was replenished with new works. Soon his name in artistic circles began to be associated with the history of the Russian avant-garde in the first third of the 20th century. Malevich, Kandinsky, Chagall, Rodchenko, Klyun, Popova, Filonov - the creations of these masters adorned the walls of Costakis' apartment.

Its unique collection included works by dozens of artists, many of whom would otherwise have been simply forgotten. A self-taught collector who became a true connoisseur of the art of collecting art treasures forgotten in the Soviet Union, Costakis spent a lot of effort and money to preserve the names of its innovative artists for the country. He also stubbornly collected icons, considering them spiritualized, sacred objects of art. Later admitted:

The paintings of avant-garde artists opened my eyes to the icon. I began to understand that these are very related things, I began to recognize in the icon elements of abstract painting and Suprematism, all kinds of universal symbolism ...

Kostaki's apartment and country house gradually became a place of attraction for fellow collectors, artists, musicians, performers and ordinary Soviet citizens who longed to join the then forbidden art.

At that time, Costakis did not have any hopes of organizing an exhibition and showing his wealth to the general public, because the authorities stubbornly denied the avant-garde as an art, considering it a low-grade hack.

In 1976, a fire broke out in his country mansion. In the fire, works that George greatly appreciated were lost. It was a real blow for him. He himself believed that the cause of the fire was an elementary arson, which was arranged by thieves who visited the house and stole several dozen works. And soon the Moscow apartment of Costakis was attacked by robbers. The attackers stole the most precious exhibits. The affected family also considered this raid not accidental and associated it with the fact that the authorities stubbornly refuse to allow the existence of an unofficial museum of banned avant-garde art.

The decision to emigrate

Meanwhile, a fierce struggle was unfolding in the country "with speculators from art." Power structures began to clean the underground market of collectors. In 1974, the famous collector Volodymyr Moroz was arrested in Lvov, and his huge collection of art treasures was confiscated in favor of the state. This story caused panic among the collectors of the USSR.
In Kostaki's apartment, threatening phone calls were regularly heard.

We will dispossess you, bastard! shouted rough voices.

Georgy sent several letters to Brezhnev and Andropov asking him to protect his assembly and family. The answer is cold silence. The collector realized that it became dangerous to live with such a collection in Moscow.

In such circumstances, Costakis in 1979 decided to emigrate with his family to their historical homeland - to Greece. The authorities allowed him to leave only if he donated the majority of the exhibits to the State Tretyakov Gallery.

As a result, more than eight hundred works from the Costakis collection formed the basis of the Tretyakov Gallery's avant-garde collection, part of the icon collection was included in the collection of the Andrei Rublev Museum of Old Russian Culture and Art, 700 drawings by Anatoly Zverev formed the gold fund of the Anatoly Zverev Museum collection.

In the Western press, the collector Costakis was reproached for the fact that in the 1930-1970s he paid artists relatively little money for paintings that are now worth millions. To which George replied:

It should not be forgotten that I did not have the financial resources of the official artists favored by the authorities, songwriters and other rich people who collected art. In addition (and many can confirm this), I have always supported financially young artists, as well as relatives of masters who have gone to another world!

Irony and mockery

The genius of Costakis lies in the fact that he understood the artistic value of the Russian avant-garde earlier than others. I understood at a time when the authorities considered the creations of the avant-garde artists to be outright hack-work.

His daughter said:

Over the pope, many ironized and even mockingly laughed. The ill-wishers believed that the art of the avant-garde would never be recognized and appreciated, that he was just doing some kind of devilry!

One of the unique works of Lyubov Popova, written on a plywood sheet, was discovered by Kostaki in Zvenigorod, near Moscow: the inhabitants of a dilapidated house blocked the window opening with a picture. They didn't have the money to put in the glass. Georgy instantly solved this problem, and in return received the coveted painting by Popova.

On the back of Kliment Redko's painting "The Uprising", bought from the artist's widow Tatyana Feodorovna, Kostaki wrote shortly before the transfer of the painting to the Tretyakov Gallery: "The painting of the century, the greatest work of revolutionary Russia. George Costakis. Moscow, April 14, 77.

In 1988, George fell seriously ill. He was treated in the best clinics, but the disease still struck down the great collector. He left the mortal world in 1990. After his death, the Greek state bought part of the Costakis collection and placed it in the State Museum of Modern Art in Thessaloniki, founded in 1997.

Irina Pronina

EXHIBITIONS

Journal number:

EXHIBITION “GEORGE COSTAKI. "DEPARTURE FROM THE USSR TO ALLOW ...". ON THE COLLECTOR’S 100TH ANNIVERSARY” BECAME THE MAIN PROJECT OF THE TRETYAKOV GALLERY IN THE PAST 2014. THE ATTENTION AND INTEREST OF NUMEROUS VISITORS OF THE MUSEUM TO THE ACTIVITIES OF GEORGY DIONISOVICH KOSTAKI (1913-1990), THE FAMOUS MOSCOW COLLECTOR, A GENEROUS GIVER AND AN ACTIVE POPULARIZER OF ART, WAS ATTRACTED ON JULY 5, 201 3 YEARS WITH THE OPENING OF THE INFORMATION HALL IN THE EXPOSITION ON KRYMSKY VAL. AN EXPANDED SHOW OF WORKS FROM HIS COLLECTION IS UNDEPLOYED ALMOST A YEAR INTO THE GENUINE CULMINATION OF THIS PECULIAR ANNIVERSARY MARATHON.

The wide honoring and attention to the merits of Kostaki, which replaced oblivion, are associated with one significant fact - the transfer of part of his collection, and precisely the best and most valuable works of art from those that the collector managed to find and acquire over the years, as a gift to the state in 1977 . The events of those years changed and illuminated his life with a high civic meaning. Therefore, probably, Costakis and his activities are often correlated with other domestic large collectors - S.I. Shchukin and I.A. Morozov or even with the famous Moscow donors brothers P.M. and S.M. Tretyakov. This comparison is only partly true. Before the revolution of 1917, everyone - aristocrats, entrepreneurs and merchants had the opportunity to openly make their acquisitions and publicly express their will to dispose of their property, and charity and patronage were a common, encouraged business. Costakis had a much harder time. He lived in a completely different, Soviet era, when any gathering was equated with hoarding, condemned ethically and even persecuted as a manifestation of bourgeois survivals. And Kostaki's “ideologically alien” hobbies in collecting icons and works of Russian art of the 1910s-1930s, the so-called Russian avant-garde, fell under the political article altogether. Overcoming many dangers on the thorny path of the seeker of "forgotten masterpieces" by means known to him alone, he saved a huge number of priceless works. His will, his very desire to transfer to the state for public review a part of the “forbidden” artistic heritage collected in such difficult conditions - this gesture of a private person at the time of “collective intelligence” was a bold and daring challenge to the entire system of established rules. The example of Costakis in the 20th century is unprecedented.

Now it is no longer possible to connect everything that the eye of Costakis once took away. Like any other private collection, it has undergone changes - first at the behest of its creator, then his heirs. It is almost impossible to “reconstruct” his collection even for 1977, when there was a grandiose division of the then world-famous collection of Russian avant-garde of the 1910-1930s into two parts - what was left as a gift to the state, and what Costakis took with him leaving the USSR. Since then, exhibitions of works from both parts of the collection, separately or together, have been held in many galleries and museums around the world more than once. "Kostakievo" masterpieces of the Russian avant-garde often come to the general review from two places - Moscow and Thessaloniki, where they, as legal residents, have a permanent "Russian" and "Greek" registration, however, they have never met in Russian halls. The curators of the anniversary exhibition proposed a new angle of view on the Costakis collection and a departure from the already established international exhibition strategy: to present the main thing - "avant-garde from Costakis" as effectively as possible. For the first time, the organizers focused on the scale of the collector's personality, and with carefully thought-out methods, the audience was led to reflect on his fate in a historical context. The Costakis collection is shown in different dimensions: it is diverse in terms of the breadth of its collecting trends and the height of the scale of the artistic quality of works, it is unique as a visible “encyclopedia of the Russian avant-garde”, and his gift is grandiose in its generosity and extraordinary as a landmark event for the Soviet era. Together with Costakis and his family, we all received the message - “Leaving the USSR is allowed ...”, or will definitely be allowed. The anniversary presentation of the collection is addressed to the modern viewer, and the wording "Departure from the USSR is allowed." is a sign, a kind of meta-message to our present. In the USSR in the 1970s, all varieties of innovative trends in art of the 1910-1970s, that is, what G.D. Kostaki were under a strict ideological ban. The works of now such recognized masters as Chagall and Kandinsky, Filonov and Tatlin, Popova and Klyun were not exhibited in museums until 1986, and the names of many other famous artists were forbidden to be mentioned in official literature. The very question of accepting a part of the Costakis collection as a gift for a long time stuck in the bowels of the USSR Ministry of Culture, being discussed in the highest spheres of various departments. there was no ready answer to such a bold proposal, the officials needed to be creative and not make a mistake with a comma in the right place of the well-known phrase “permit cannot be prohibited”. The historical reality of the Soviet state structure, the atmosphere of constant ideological and spatial constraint of those days influenced all manifestations of culture, public consciousness and the personal life of an individual. Therefore, the post-war period and the cultural life of the era of thaw and stagnation are also another hero of the exhibition. In an artistic way, a kind of metaphor for the atmosphere of that time in the exposition space became a kind of luminous house-cube. This symbolic “House of Costakis” contains two huge photographs, enlarged to the size of a panel, showing how the collection was placed in three rows in a low, small-sized Moscow apartment. On the other wall, small black-and-white documentary photos in black frames hang densely, in a homely way - mute evidence of those meetings that took place in the house of Costakis under the painting "Red Square" by V. V. Kandinsky. The Costakis collection attracted the attention of a large number of people, including foreign diplomats, well-known representatives of the Russian and foreign artistic elite. I. Stravinsky, S. Richter, M. Chagall, E. Kennedy, A. Vaida, M. Antonioni, D. Rockefeller, S. Kapitsa, A. Voznesensky and many others visited the apartment on Vernadsky Avenue. From the outer sides of the cube, from stunning photographs of the 1970s by the famous photographer I.A. Palmina has the eyes of a tight-knit group of nonconformist artists on the audience, and in the center of them is always he, Georgy Dionisovich, their friend, breadwinner, connoisseur and brave defender at the famous “bulldozer exhibition”, dispersed by the authorities half an hour after the opening. That is the plot of this story. The main space of the main exhibition hall is divided in such a way that different parts are presented in proportion to the place they occupy in the Costakis collection.

For part of the collection of icons and images, especially revered by the entire Costaki family, a “red corner” was made on liturgical sewing at the exhibition. Of the more than 60 items donated to the Andrei Rublev Museum, 15 samples of different icon painting schools are exhibited, such as the icon of the Novgorod land of the first third of the 16th century "The Miracle of George about the Serpent", the double-sided icon "Theophany - the Descent of the Cross" of the second half of the 17th century, determined in the series traditions of the Russian North. An example of Serbian work, which is rarely found in Russia, is extremely interesting - the cross over the iconostasis "The Crucifixion of Christ", created around 1600. The transferred works of ancient icon painting of the 16th-18th centuries are regularly shown at exhibitions. The unique surviving fragments of the monumental wall painting of the 12th-century Church of the Savior on Nereditsa, destroyed during the war years, have become an inviolable part of the permanent exposition of the Andrei Rublev Museum.

At the opposite end of the large hall there are convenient showcases for a comprehensive examination of the smallest exhibits of the exhibition from the Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve. Georgy Dionisovich had a chance to acquire a collection of folk toys made of clay, wood and even straw, rare in its completeness, and thereby save the result of many years of collecting activity of one of his fellow collectors, an actor and historian, the author of one of the first books about the centers of production of folk toys N.I. . Tsereteli. This collection was also included in the number of rarities transferred to the state. The clay toy is represented by several nominal works of the noble master Larion Frolovich Zotkin from the village of Abashevo (“Goat with Silver Horns”, 1919), old Dymkovo “ladies” and “roosters”. The sculptural composition “Musicians” was made of wood in Sergiev Posad in the 1920s, and the figurine “Nicholas II on the Throne” (GMZ “Tsaritsyno”) was carved in the Nizhny Novgorod province at the beginning of the 20th century. One of the rarest peasant toys-symbols of the Russian North is the very short-lived “Red Flywheel”, assembled at the beginning of the 20th century from many improvised materials: wood, moss, tow, birch bark, twine, paper. More than 200 items of folk and decorative and applied art donated, awaiting transfer to the formed profile museum, were first temporarily placed in the storage of the USSR Ministry of Culture, and only in 1993 the Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve became their new “home”.

The greatest place is given to the most iconic and title part of the collection and the gift of Costakis - avant-garde works from the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery. All pictorial and graphic works of this group are divided into separate sections - early avant-garde; cubism, cubofuturism; plastic painting; suprematism, constructivism; experimental trends in the 1920s, new figurativeness in the 1930s; late 1940s avant-garde. Such a division corresponds to the desire and the most important task of the collector himself - he wanted to create a visible "encyclopedia of the Russian avant-garde", to reflect the entire history of this direction of Russian art, which brought the domestic art program of the 1910s to the forefront in the pan-European pre-war movement to update the visual language.

The exhibited selected works from a huge gift given to three state Moscow museums were supplemented by a few items provided by the collector's daughters. These are watercolor portraits of the Costakis family by A. Zverev, several works by “nonconformist” artists of the 1950s and 1970s, and seven paintings by G.D. Kostaki, created by him after 1978. These two sections fit on the mezzanine of the main hall. An album of the same name that accompanies the exhibition, and a multimedia project that includes many works and archival materials that have been stored for many years in Greece, in the historical homeland of G.D. Costakis, significantly complement the exposition of the exhibition. For the first time, information about the Greek part of the collection became available to Russian-speaking readers. Costakis has come a very long way to the recognition of his contribution to Russian and European culture, and the biographical outline, documented for the first time by L.R. Pchelkina, serves as a vivid confirmation of this.

The Greek citizen Georgy Kostaki was born on July 5, 1913 in Moscow and lived most of his life in Russia. His father Dionysius Spiridonovich (1868-1932), a native of the island of Zakynthos, the successor of the family business of the tobacco trade and engaged in commerce in Russia since the early 1900s, and his mother Elena Emmanuilovna (nee Papakhristodoulo, 1880-1975) created a large and strong family , lived in abundance and had strong ties with the Greek diaspora. Mother knew several languages, was pious and had a special gift for tactful treatment of everyone around her. Five children were born in the family: daughter Maria (1901-1970) and four sons: Spiridon (1903-1930), Nikolai (1908-1989), George (1913-1990) and Dmitry (1918-2008). After the revolution, when the family lost all sources of subsistence, children began to help their parents by selling the rest of their property on the market; then the sons, early accustomed to technology, mastered the chauffeur's business. The family moved to the village at the Bakovka station, where their grandmother, mother, aunt and sister with children will live until the end of their days, supported by the entire male part of the family. This house in Bakovka would later become one of the collector's most precious memories and worries at the same time. In the mid-1920s, the father of the family, as a Greek citizen, was able to get a job at the Greek embassy, ​​and his eldest sons also began to work there. Thus, it has become a family "tradition". In 1930, Georgy Kostaki, who studied only seven classes at school, entered the same embassy to work as a driver. Soon the family suffers losses - the death of their beloved Spiridon, a passionate motorcycle racer, during the competition, in which Vasily Stalin also took part, and the death of his father, whose heart could not stand grief. but in this difficult time, fate presented Georgy with its gift - in 1932 he met and a few days later married Zinaida Semyonovna Panfilova (1912-1992). Daughters Inna (1933), Alika (1939), Natasha (1949) and son Sasha (1953-2003) were born in their family. Zinaida Semyonovna came from a Moscow merchant family, "alien to the class environment", which did not give her the opportunity to receive an education worthy of her rare beauty and marvelous timbre of voice. Both spouses loved music, and Zinochka's performance of romances accompanied by "dear Zhora" was a signature "treat" of the hospitable hosts at all gatherings.

In 1938 Dmitry's mother, aunt and younger brother were arrested, the women were pulled out after a few months, and Dmitry spent several years in the Kotlas camp. George, at great risk to his personal freedom, managed to get there and visit his brother, and upon his return he did not stop fussing about him through the embassy. When the Greek embassy in Moscow was closed in 1939, for family reasons, Costakis did not use the opportunity given to him to leave for Canada. It is difficult for a foreigner to find employment, he agrees to a temporary job as a watchman, first in the Finnish, then in the Swedish embassy. In 1944, he was lucky: he entered the service of the Canadian Embassy, ​​becoming a supply manager. Soon, Georgy Dionisovich, executive and courteous, quick-witted and enterprising by nature, becomes the chief administrator of the Russian staff and, together with the status of diplomatic immunity, receives a significant advantage over the Soviet employees of the embassy - he is paid in foreign currency, and a certain part can officially be exchanged in the bank for rubles . These were the conditions of the labor contract concluded with him, a foreign national.

When Costakis had to take diplomats to antique shops, he allowed himself to make small purchases. Gradually got involved in collecting and tried to learn as much as possible about the items. He remembered his teenage embarrassment. Immediately after the revolution, Uncle Christopher bequeathed to him a collection of stamps, and the boy, not knowing about its true value, without the knowledge of adults, easily exchanged it for a bicycle. The epiphany came later, when rich buyers came specially for this collection. the indignation of the family was difficult to bear, and George even decided to run away, but was discovered at the station and returned to his father's house. He remembered that lesson and always tried to study the rarities that fell to him. First he collected old Dutch, porcelain, Russian silver, carpets and fabrics. After the war, the interests of the collector changed dramatically, and the collection changed as well.

George Costakis in his memoirs described how, in 1946, he almost accidentally saw several works by avant-garde artists, in particular, The Green Stripe (1917) by Olga Rozanova. A native of ancient Vladimir, Olga Rozanova belonged to a small group of innovative artists. Malevich's Suprematism then opened the way for them to understand "weightlessness", the free floating of bodies in space - after all, after the invention of cinema, one suddenly felt "tired" from contemplating the statics of classical schemes. Through the "Green Stripe" Costakis discovered the world of new art, discovered before many others. He "fell ill" with the avant-garde, which, under the ideological conditions of that time, was dangerous and, according to many, useless to assemble. He could not understand anything in abstract painting, but the new, previously unknown world of bright colors and simple forms shocked his imagination, touched his curiosity and inspired him to search for "new art". His first educator was a neighbor in the village of Bakovka, a well-educated archivist, a connoisseur of old libraries and a hereditary collector I.V. Kachurin. He helped with the first acquisitions, even donated something, suggested how to look for knowledgeable people. And Costakis found them, listened, eagerly absorbing knowledge. He turned to the well-known researcher of creativity V.V. Mayakovsky - N.I. Khardzhiev, who introduced him to the St. Petersburg avant-garde, the legacy of Malevich, Matyushin, Filonov, and the Ender family of artists. he also collected information from D.V. Sarabyanov, who later became a leading specialist in the avant-garde and creativity of L.S. Popova. Kostaki was helped in the search by young art critics V.I., carried away by his excitement. Rakitin and S.V. Yamshchikov, there were other assistants among the artists who brought him news of interesting meetings and finds. Kostaki rode, looked, selected and, finding the right amount, acquired, cleaned himself and gave it to the restorers, framed it and, finally, hung it on the wall. He passionately desired to prove to the whole world the priority of many Russian innovative artists of the early 20th century and directed all his efforts towards achieving this goal. Of course, there was hope that it was he who opened this Klondike of the Russian avant-garde and over time, someday, everything would pay off, the funds torn from his family would return and the children would understand what all their fears were for, the presence of eternal “observers” from the authorities in the entrance KGB. The deep conviction of the collector that the art that captured and admired him so much would be understood and recognized in the future helped to preserve the priceless works of Russian avant-garde artists, now known throughout the world. And so it happened.

In 1955 Costakis met R. Falk, who told him about his creative life in Moscow and Paris in the 1910s-1930s. Soon Costakis left the USSR for the first time and immediately after consultations with doctors in Sweden rushed to Paris to meet with Goncharova and Larionov, Nina Kandinsky and Chagall himself. Goncharova, seeing the great enthusiasm of an unusual collector from the USSR for her and Larionov's distant years of youth, painted a small picture in the "Rayonism style" and presented it as a kind of homage to Costakis' hobby. He returned home inspired, entered into a short correspondence with Parisian artists. Then - the festival exhibitions of 1956, the most interesting new acquaintances, the arrival in Moscow of the famous critic Alfred Bar Jr., founder of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The American examined the collected things and stated his understanding of the art he had seen. Their points of view did not coincide in everything, but Costakis was interested to know the opinion of a prominent professional, they began to exchange rare letters. In 1959, he was already taking his early "chagalls" to the maestro's exhibition in Hamburg. Life is in full swing around Costakis. In the early 1960s, he visited the houses of experimental artists of the 1920s and 1930s I. Kudryashov and I. Babichev, acquired works by left-wing artists, his contemporaries, primarily A. Zverev, V. Veisberg, D. Krasnopevtsev, O. Rabin, I. Vulokha. For a whole generation of the sixties, his hospitable house became the place for the first acquaintance with the artists of the Russian avant-garde, which to a large extent determined the direction of their creative searches. With the growth of the collection, the knowledge of Costakis deepened, and his authority grew. In 1973, Costakis gave a series of lectures at universities in America and Canada, as well as at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In the same 1973, an exhibition was held from the Costakis collection in London.

Photo: Artemy Furman (FURMAN360), 2015

However, by the mid-1970s, there was a noticeable deterioration in relations between George Costakis and representatives of the Soviet authorities, and he decided to leave the USSR. As Georgy Dionisovich writes in his memoirs, he decided to leave Moscow, where he was born and where he spent most of his life, not easily, for medical reasons and under the pressure of anxiety that thickened around him after a strange fire in his house in the village of Bakovka - many burned there nonconformist works of the 1960s. The collection collected over many years was one of the brakes - it was officially difficult to take it all out officially. According to Soviet laws, only works created over the past 40 years were subject to unhindered export, with the payment of a significant customs duty. Of course, he, a foreign citizen, could use various diplomatic channels. but how can a wife who had Soviet citizenship and his adult children get permission to leave? After consulting with an old friend, Semenov, a well-known Soviet diplomat and collector, G.D. Kostaki found a solution - on October 26, 1976 he wrote a letter to the Minister of Culture of the USSR P.N. Demichev. For almost 36 years it was hidden from the eyes of researchers, and for the first time we were able, relying on it and other recently declassified documents, to reconstruct the procedure for accepting the gift of Costakis by the state.

Photo: Artemy Furman (FURMAN360), 2015

“At present, I have a desire to donate to the state the result of my many years of work - a unique collection of Russian and Soviet art of the 20th century. Among the transferred works there are works of high aesthetic and economic value, very important for the development of the artistic culture of the era, such as: "Portrait of Matyushin" by K. Malevich, "Red Square" by V. Kandinsky, relief by V. Tatlin, "Proun" by El Lissitzky , landscape by A. Yavlensky, relief and painting compositions by L. Popova, paintings by M. Chagall, N. Udaltsova, A. Drevin, A. Exter, G. Yakulov, M. Larionov, N. Goncharova, A. Rodchenko, P. Filonov , O. Rozanova, I. Kliun / "Running landscape" /, I. Puni,<...>a number of projects of propaganda art of the revolutionary years by L. Popova, I. Kudryashov, G. Klutsis,<...>paintings by A. Volkov, S. Nikritin, M. Plaksin, K. Redko,<...>paintings by Serge Polyakov.

The description of the nature of the collection was followed by the conditions for its further existence in state collections, the main of which were the following: all works are transferred to the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow; “Landscape with an amphitheater” by G. Yakulov is transferred to the collection of the State Art Gallery of Armenia in Yerevan; a useful part of the collection should be exhibited in the permanent exhibition of Soviet art with an indication of the gift of G.D. Costakis. This condition is mandatory when exhibiting works at all exhibitions, including foreign ones. The collection should not be scattered, the works should not be transferred to other museums and institutions, sold or donated. “By transferring a large part of the collection to the state, I ask to be allowed to take part of the collection abroad /<.>two separate lists are attached/. To solve all the problems related to the fate of the collection, in my opinion, trustees should be appointed, consisting of: Popova V.I., Khalturina A.G., Manina V.S., Semenova V.S., Rakitina V.I. , Sarabyanova D.V., Kostaki N.G ... ". The Minister of Culture of the USSR did not have the right to give an answer to all the conditions of the collector, and in early January 1977 he followed up with a request to the culture department of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

Photo: Artemy Furman (FURMAN360), 2015

Correspondence of the USSR MK with the ideological organ of the party for many years was kept under the heading "secret", it contained the motivation, according to which almost all the conditions of G.D. were accepted. Kostaki: "It can also be safely assumed that the acceptance of the gift of Kostaki and his departure with part of the works he collected will receive a positive political response for us." As a result, the minister's request, set out in a certificate signed on February 25, 1977 by the heads of three departments of the CPSU Central Committee, was brought to a draft decision and considered at a meeting of the Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee on March 1, 1977. By a resolution of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPSU, consisting of six secretaries who unanimously voted “for”, the main condition of the donor was supported: his gift was accepted, Costakis himself received “permission to leave with the right to enter and permanently reside in the USSR, to own a cooperative apartment that belonged to his wife , a citizen of the USSR. Permission to export abroad a part of the collection of G.D. Costakis were given as an exception to the current law. The rights to reproduce works from the gift of G.D. Costakis, in accordance with the norms of Soviet legislation, were transferred to the state.

After five months of waiting and uncertainty, on March 16, 1977, the collector was sent a response from the Deputy Minister of Culture of the USSR V.I. Popov with a statement of all the conditions accepted and the addition: "The USSR Ministry of Culture expresses its sincere gratitude to you in connection with your noble deed." The last formal point in the transfer of the collection as a gift was the Order of the USSR Ministry of Culture No. 175 dated March 14, 1977 on the creation of a commission and on acceptance for permanent storage in the State Tretyakov Gallery.

Members of the commission and employees of the State Tretyakov Gallery were engaged in accepting works for several weeks. a new life of the collection of G.D. Costakis.

In the autumn of 1977, having received an exit permit (with the right to re-enter for permanent residence! - an unprecedented case for those leaving for permanent residence from the USSR), daughter Alika and son Alexander with their families took out most of the collection. A few days after their arrival in Germany, the first exhibition of avant-garde from the Costakis collection in the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf opened in Germany. She made a real sensation. In January 1978, Georgy Dionisovich and his wife left the country, later the family of Inna's daughter left the country. In the fall of 1979, works by A. Arapov, A. Arkhipenko, D. Burliuk, N. Goncharova, V. Kandinsky, I. Klyun, E. Lissitzky, L. Popova and many others were put up for sale at Sotheby's in the fall of 1979 to support the entire large family. . A little later, at the very end of 1979, the exhibition "Paris-Moscow" opened, at which some avant-garde works from the gift of Costakis were presented for the first time abroad, but the organizers for some reason "forgot to indicate" whose gift it was. Inattention is always unpleasant, in this case it hurt especially painfully ...

Costakis' mental balance was helped to restore his painting, which he became interested in after leaving Russia, when the works ceased to fill the walls of his house - they were "stored" in museums and in special cells of banks. In 1981-1982, a grandiose exhibition tour took place in eight cities of the United States, accompanied by the publication of an avant-garde collection and a series of performances, then the works were shown in many museums in Europe. In 1986, he came to the USSR again for an exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery, in the catalog of which nine works from his gift and the usual five lines were published for the first time, as well as about other donors.

Georgy Dionisovich Costakis, who died on March 9, 1990, was buried in the Athens cemetery not far from the resting place of the great Schliemann, the discoverer of the legendary Troy. At the end of his life, Costakis understood: donating part of his treasure, his open "Troy" of the Russian avant-garde, to the people with whom he had to share the trials of revolution, repression, war and devastation, became the main act in his life. THANK YOU, KOSTAKI!

* In the captions to the illustrations, the works donated by G.D. Kostaki State Tretyakov Gallery in 1977

1. Osip Mandelstam. Poems in memory of Andrei Bely. 1934

An exhibition dedicated to Georgy Costakis, the great collector of the 20th century, opens at the Tretyakov Gallery. The cultural riches that Costakis collected made the glory of several our and foreign museums at once.

Malevich K.S. Portrait of M.V. Matyushin. 1913. Source: Press Service of the State Tretyakov Gallery

When the Greek citizen left Russia forever in 1977 (in fact, it was an expulsion), he left the best paintings of his collection to the Tretyakov Gallery. Today, one composition by Malevich or Popova is worth tens of millions of dollars at auctions. George Costakis donated hundreds of avant-garde works to the country. Part of it was allowed to be taken out - now the Museum of Modern Art in Thessaloniki is proud of them.

He was not an oligarch, an underground millionaire, or an antique dealer. Greek by birth (hence his nationality), he worked as a caretaker at the Canadian Embassy. He lived in a typical apartment on Leninsky, all the walls and even the ceilings of which were hung with paintings.

Chashnik I.G. Suprematism. 1924–1925 Source: Press Service of the State Tretyakov Gallery

This is the paradox of Costakis: countless artistic treasures are collected on the salary of an employee, comparable to the salary of a Soviet engineer. His passion was stronger than circumstances. His taste and flair were worth more than money. He collected Suprematist and abstract paintings at the moment when they were thrown out of museums and thrust into the far mezzanines. He was looking for rare things Rodchenko or Stepanova, which were gathering dust in the cottages and attics. He was friends with unofficial artists, becoming their colleague, philanthropist and teacher. In other words, it was the genius of art management.

The fact that without Costakis we would have been a country with provincial art, and with it turned into a world art power, can be seen at the exhibition. But besides the paintings, a lot is connected with the name of Costakis. Georgy Dionisovich, for example, left a fascinating book of memoirs, My Avant-Garde. It contains a lot of tales and stories that tell about the acquisition of a particular job. And scattered throughout the book are tips and examples for future collectors. Later, already in Greece, Costakis formulated five simple but effective rules for anyone who wants to collect contemporary art.

Exter A.A. Florence. 1914–1915 Source: Press Service of the State Tretyakov Gallery

Five rules of the collector from George Kostaki

1. “A novice collector should act like he is a millionaire. It's like the money comes naturally to him. If you really like some kind of work, you should not count the money (even if there are very few of them and you will have to get into debt). In any case, the cost of the work that you buy today will increase tens and hundreds of times over time. I've been through this many times in my life."

2. “Rationality is the main enemy of the collector. The more you think, estimate and calculate, the worse the result.

3. “The main thing is that you need to rely only on yourself, only you make the decision! A real collector is ready to give everything for the work he wants to get. It is easier for him to endure the need than to lose the desired find. Sometimes he may sacrifice a month's salary, vacation money, savings for a new house or car. No one has ever died from such victims."

4. “A collector should not bargain. It is always better to overpay than to bargain for a discount or lower the price. This golden rule has stood the test of time and all my experience. If you bargain too hard, you will of course be given a discount. But after a while, the buyer will spend the money, and he will constantly be gnawed by a worm of doubt about how much he sold cheap. And the next time, if he has a desire to sell some work, he will no longer offer it to you. You will develop a reputation as a greedy and prudent dealer. This is how the money you bargain will work against you.”

5. “One of the most important rules for a collector is that he must necessarily set a limit for himself - draw a line at which he must stop in his collecting passion. Any collection should have boundaries, you have to get rid of some things.”