Lyubov Popova knew better than anyone else that, as far as early 20^th century art was concerned, Cubism was IT.

Why just paint an ordinary still life or portrait when you could make it endlessly confusing by infusing it with some Cubist elements? Weird shapes here, unnecessary lines there – Cubism truly has it all. Picasso’s brand of Cubism took especially great joy in inventing things that weren’t actually there.

That’s what Popova discovered when she left her native Russia to travel to Western Europe to study the latest painting styles. But be careful, folks. Messing around with Cubism could turn you into a left-wing, Communist nut. One day you’re experimenting with the shapes that compose the various planes of reality, and the next thing you know you’re getting involved with artists like Kazimir Malevich who literally only paint shapes. Nice squares, am I right Malevich?

This particular Cubist portrait stayed in the artist’s family for forty-two years after it was painted in 1915. I guess that’s what happens when one of the greatest female Russian Constructivists dies an unexpected, early death at the age of 35.

Luckily, George Costakis was pretty hot in the Russian art scene when the artist’s family finally wanted to part with this painting. Costakis was a pretty unique guy; he was a Russian-born Greek art collector with a taste for the avant-garde, modernist side of Russian art history. Costakis’s obsession with the Russian avant-garde began in 1946, but he hadn’t always collected such cutting-edge art. He started out like all of his other art-collecting peers; his early collection included Russian silver, porcelain, and works by sixteenth and seventeenth-century Dutch artists.

After 1946, Costakis made it his personal mission to preserve modernist works by artists like Chagall, Malevich, Kandinsky, and of course Popova, among others. At this time, Stalin had banned avant-garde art in Russia and only allowed Social Realist art in the name of Communism. Because of modern art’s taboo status even when Costakis began collecting it in the late 1940s, Costakis bought now-infamous works for as cheap as only 100 beans. Many of these works are now worth millions.

After gaining some clout in the international art world, Costakis then transitioned to helping others buy modern, Russian art. He helped get approximately 160 of Popova’s paintings, including The Pianist, out of the country and into others where it could be freely appreciated for its genius. With Costakis’s assistance, Canadian diplomat Victor C. Moore liberated the painting to the Great White North in 1957.