Senior research fellow at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Author of numerous publications on cultural history and art, including Icon and Devotion: Sacred Spaces in Imperial Russia (London: Reaktion Books 2002); Framing Russian Art: From Early Icons to Malevich (London: Reaktion Books 2011); Russian Art Nouveau and Ancient Icons: From Sacred Object to Masterpiece (Moscow: Indrik 2016) (in Russian).
In an era when the sole approved artistic doctrine in the USSR was Socialist Realism, the Moscow collector George Costakis built up a unique body of Russian avant-garde art, alongside numerous early Russian icons, revealing deep-rooted links between the two genres.