Olga Costa

Olga Costa (b. Leipzig, August 28, 1913 – Guanajuato, June 28, 1993) was a painter and cultural promoter who immigrated to Mexico from Germany when she was twelve. She began to study art at the Academy of San Carlos but left after only three months to help support her family. However, she met her husband, artist José Chávez Morado during this time. Her marriage to him involved her in Mexico’s cultural and intellectual scene and she began to develop her ability to paint on her own, with encouragement from her husband. She had numerous exhibitions of her work in Mexico, with her work also sent to be sold in the United States. She was also involved in the founding and development of various galleries, cultural societies and three museums in the state of Guanajuato. She received the Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes among others for her work.

Costa was born in 1913 in Leipzig, Germany. Her parents, violinist and composer Jacobo Kostakowsky and Ana Falvisant Bovglarevokeylandel, were from Czarist Russia but left the Ukraine region to escape the persecution of Jews just before the First World War . They fled first to Leipzig, where Olga was born and after the war began to Berlin where her sister Lya was born.

When the war ended, the family had severe economic problems, prompting her father to become radicalized politically, influenced by figures such as Rosa Luxemburg. He was detained several times by the German government but when sentenced to death, the family escaped to Mexico in 1925. The family arrived to the country at the port of Veracruz then in the same year settled in Mexico City .

Olga’s full legal name was Olga Kostakowsky Falvisant but shortly after arriving to Mexico, she began signing her name Olga Costa, which sounded more Spanish. It would become the name used in her art career. She and her sister Lya first attended the Colegio Alemán (German School) in the city, with Lya becoming a writer (later married to historian and art critic Luis Cardoza y Aragón) and Olga participating in music, especially playing the piano and singing in the school choir. This musical bent was due to the influence and encouragement of her father. Her first exposure to painting was attending concerts at the Anfiteatro Simón Bolivar where Diego Rivera had painted a mural, the colors of which fascinated Olga.

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