George Costakis: A Russian Life in Art

By Peter Roberts

Book Overview

This splendid book paints a rich portrait of the Russian avant-garde and the intrigues which it saved for posterity. Roberts has written a fascinating history of the famous Costakis collection and its creator George Costakis who, for nearly thirty years, was an administrative clerk in the Canadian embassy in Moscow. Until his forced departure from Russia in 1978 he collected, continually and painstakingly, the abstract, constructivist and supremacist art of 1912 to 1930 which fell into official disrepute under Stalin. The author, a former Canadian ambassador to Moscow, is a first-hand authority on Costakis and his magnificent obsession.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0886292077
• ISBN13: 9780886292072
• Release Date: September 1994
• Publisher: Carleton University Press
• Length: 223 Pages

Customer Reviews

Worth reading for Russian avant-garde art history

This is a very interesting book about the collector of one of the world's largest collections of Russian and Soviet avant-garde art. George Costakis, ethnically a Greek but culturally a Russian, as the title suggests, worked in the Canadian embassy during the mid-20th century and also collected Malevich, Rozanova, Filonov, Popova, Rodchenko, and Kandinsky during a time when the art was completely devalued and seen as worthless. The most interesting part of the book deals with Costakis' collecting, which can be seen as saving the art. For example, some paintings had been used as building material for dachas or for children's treehouses when Costakis rescued them. The author of the book, however, isn't a professional writer, and it shows. Parts of the book are awkward and don't really go together. He did conduct extensive interviews with Costakis, some of which are interesting for Soviet history more broadly, as are Costakis' drawing of a gulag camp at Kotlas. Overall, however, if you have an interest in Russian and Soviet avant-garde art, this is definitely a book worth having.