National Gallery hosts documentary on Russian Avant-Garde and Kostakis Collection

The National Gallery is hosting the documentary ‘When Chagall Cost Less Than a Kilo of Potatoes’ as part of the exhibition ‘The World of Avant-Garde: City, Nature, Universe, Human’. Directed by Giorgos Chr. Zervas and Giorgos Papakonstantinou in 1996, the film received the First Prize for Documentary at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and a State Documentary Award in 1997.

The documentary explores the Russian Avant-Garde movement and the Kostakis Collection, which consists of over 5,000 artworks, including paintings and drawings. Much of this collection was brought to Greece by George Kostakis upon his departure from the former Soviet Union. The collection has been the subject of study by art historians such as Margit Rowell and Evelyn Weiss.