Natalia Goncharova

Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962), Russian painter and stage designer. Goncharova was an influential avant-garde artist in early 20th-century Russia. She was born in Ladyzhino, Tula. In 1898 she enrolled at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and it was there, in 1900, that she met the artist Mikhail Larionov, who was to become her lifelong companion. She left the school in 1902.

Goncharova's early works were influenced by recent developments in French painting—Impressionism, the Nabis, Pointillism, and Fauvism. The impulsive, expressive traits she saw in this work, especially that of the Nabis and the Fauves, encouraged her own passion for the native traditions of Russian art, in particular icons, folk art, and lubki (popular Russian woodcuts). Admiring the unsophisticated boldness of this art, she had by 1907-1908 developed an expressive, simplified, and colourful style typical of the so-called Neo-Primitivism of the period, as seen, for example, in La Roussalka (1908, Ludwig Museum, Cologne). In 1912 she was involved—together with Larionov and others—in the organization of the exhibition “The Donkey's Tail” in Moscow, which constituted the high point of Neo-Primitivism in Russia.

In 1913, Larionov, influenced by Cubism and Italian Futurism, published his Rayonnist manifesto, which was signed by Goncharova and others. Taking as its central tenet the interaction of light rays around objects, the manifesto led Goncharova to create a number of Rayonnist works that incorporate splintered, angular elements, for example, Cats (1913; Solomon Guggenheim Museum, New York). In the autumn of 1913 she created the scenery and costumes for Le Coq d'Or which Sergei Diaghilev was producing for the Ballets Russes. Her connection with Diaghilev led her to leave Russia in 1915 for Lausanne, and in 1918 she moved to Paris, where she remained with Larionov until her death. She continued to work for Diaghilev until his death in 1929 and thereafter designed stage sets for other opera and ballet productions, mostly in Paris and London. She also continued painting and exhibiting her work. Her later work is mostly in a style reminiscent of her Neo-Primitivist phase, but also includes some abstract and Rayonnist paintings dating from the 1950s. She died in Paris.