A selection from the Costakis Russian avant-garde art collection in Thessaloniki will be shown at the Palazzo Chiablese in Turin, Italy from today, October 3 to February 15, 2015.

The legendary art collection is permanently housed at the State Museum of Modern Art in Thessaloniki and 300 works of art will travel to Italy, in addition to archival material, documents, photographs, books, magazines and other items that George Costakis collected.

Costakis, who died in 1990, was born in Moscow of Russian parents and began collecting art in the 1940s.

He eventually amassed the largest known collection of Russian avant-garde art in the world, a large part of which he was obliged to leave to the Soviet state when he moved to Greece. The Greek state bought his remaining collection and housed it in Thessaloniki.