Olga Costa — painter with roots in the Russian Empire
Olga Costa was born Olga Kostakowsky on 28 August 1913 in Leipzig, Germany. Her connection to the Russian Empire runs through her parents. Her father, the violinist and composer Jacobo Kostakowsky, had been born in Odessa in 1893, and her mother, Ana Fabricant (given in some sources as Falvisant), also came from the Empire; the couple had left the Ukrainian provinces shortly before the First World War, part of the departure of Jews from the Empire in those years. After Olga's birth in Leipzig the family lived in Berlin, where her sister Lya was born.
In 1925, when she was twelve, the family emigrated to Mexico. Olga and Lya attended the German School in Mexico City, where Olga played the piano and sang in the choir, and soon after arriving she began to sign her name Olga Costa, which sounded more Spanish; it became the name of her artistic career.
In 1933 she entered the Academy of San Carlos but left after three months to work and help support her family. In that short time she studied painting with Carlos Mérida, who later called her the 'white angel of Mexican painting', and engraving with Emilio Amero, in whose class she met the painter José Chávez Morado, who became her husband and lifelong artistic partner. She took part in the cultural organisations of the period and had her first exhibition through those connections, and from 1945 exhibited regularly at the Galería de Arte Mexicano in Mexico City.
Her painting, built on flowers, fruit, anonymous women and domestic altars, draws on Mexican subject matter and everyday life. Her best-known work, La vendedora de frutas (1951), is regarded as an icon of Mexican modern art. In 1955 she lived for a time in Guanajuato while Chávez Morado painted the murals of the Alhóndiga de Granaditas, and the couple later settled there. A retrospective of more than 240 of her works was held at the Museo de Arte Moderno in 1990, and that year she received the National Prize for Arts and Sciences in Fine Arts, one of Mexico's highest cultural honours.
The couple donated their house in Guanajuato, with part of their collections and works, to the state, creating in 1993 the Museo de Arte Olga Costa – José Chávez Morado. She died in Guanajuato on 28 June 1993, aged seventy-nine.
"Born in Leipzig to emigrant parents from the Russian Empire; brought to Mexico at twelve in 1925."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Odessa, Russian Empire — father Jacobo Kostakowsky; both parents from the Ukrainian provinces of the Empire
Her parents, the violinist and composer Jacobo Kostakowsky, born in Odessa in 1893, and Ana Fabricant, left the Ukrainian provinces of the Russian Empire shortly before the First World War; she was born in Leipzig and came to Mexico with them in 1925.
.svg?width=900)
Odessa, Russian Empire — father Jacobo Kostakowsky; both parents from the Ukrainian provinces of the Empire. At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.