A selection of works from the Costakis Russian avant-garde art collection which is permanently housed in Thessaloniki will be shown at the Palazzo Chiablese in Torino, Italy from October 3 to February 15, 2015.

300 works of art from this legendary collection will travel to Italy, in addition to archival material, documents, photographs, books, magazines and other items that George Costakis collected.

George Costakis, who died in 1990, was a collector of Russian art whose collection became the most representative body of Modern Russian avant-garde art anywhere. 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.

In 1977 Costakis, with his family, left the Soviet Union and moved to Greece, but there was an agreement that he should leave 50% of his collection in the State Tretyakov Gallery of Moscow. In 1997 the Greek State bought the remaining 1275 works. They are now a part of the permanent collection of the State Museum of Contemporary Art, in Thessaloniki, Greece.

The exhibition will be curated by Museum director Maria Tsantsanoglou and Costakis art curator Angeliki Haristou. It will include influential works of Russian avant-garde art, including the Vladimir Tatlin’s “Letatlin”, the flying machine (20th century); Kasimir Malevitch’s “Portrait” (1920); Lyubov Popova’s “Travelling Woman” (1915) and Alexander Rodchenko’s “Expressive Rhythm” (1943-44).