Kandinsky

“Moscow: duality, complexity, the highest degree of mobility, collision and confusion of individual elements of the exterior … I consider this external and internal Moscow to be the starting point of my searches. Moscow is my pictorial tuning fork." - Wassily Kandinsky.

One of the most famous works by Wassily Kandinsky, one of the masterpieces of the Costakis Collection - “The Red Square" (1916) - was acquired by Costakis from the family of Vasiliy Bobrov, assistant and personal secretary of the great artist. The collector considered it important to leave the painting in Russia; and now the canvas is part of the permanent exposition of the Tretyakov Gallery.

In his memoirs, George Costakis described in detail how the “search for Kandinsky” took place: fate brought him to people who were able to help him acquire very rare and important drawings of the master. He made a mistake only once: he trusted Nina Kandinskaya, the artist's wife, who lived in Paris. He helped her get in touch with her sister and mother who remained in Moscow. Consequently, when in Moscow, Nina Kandinskaya took all the great artist’s works from her mother’s house and moved them to France. It must be noted that Costakis never chased the "big names". However, he considered the rare works of the first abstractionist, created before Kandinsky’s final departure from Russia in 1922, to be true masterpieces.