Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova (Russian: Ната́лья Серге́евна Гончаро́ва, IPA: [nɐˈtalʲjə sʲɪrˈɡʲe(j)ɪvnə ɡənʲtɕɪˈrovə]; 3 July 1881 – 17 October 1962) was a Russian avant-garde artist, painter, costume designer, writer, illustrator, and set designer. Goncharova's lifelong partner was fellow Russian avant-garde artist Mikhail Larionov. She was a founding member of both the Jack of Diamonds (1909–1911), Moscow's first radical independent exhibiting group, the more radical Donkey's Tail (1912–1913), and with Larionov invented Rayonism (1912–1914). She was also a member of the German-based art movement Der Blaue Reiter. Born in Russia, she moved to Paris in 1921 and lived there until her death.
Her painting vastly influenced the avant-garde in Russia. Her exhibitions held in Moscow and St Petersburg (1913 and 1914) were the first promoting a "new" artist by an independent gallery. When it came to the pre-revolutionary period in Russia, where decorative painting and icons were a secure profession, her modern approach to rendering icons was both transgressive and problematic. She was one of the leading figures in the avant-garde in Russia and carried this influence with her to Paris.
Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova was born on 3 July 1881 (the same year as Larionov, Picasso, and Léger), in Nagaevo (now in the Chernsky District of Tula Oblast). Her father, Sergey Mikhaylovich Goncharov, was an architect and graduate of the prestigious Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Goncharova moved to Moscow at the age of 10 in 1892; she graduated from the Fourth Women's Gymnasium in 1898. Goncharova was a great grandniece to Natalia Pushkina (née Goncharova).
Her immediate family were highly educated and considered themselves politically liberal. Her father designed and built their home, where both Natalia and her brother Afanasii grew up. They were both raised and educated by their mother and grandmother. They lived in the Orlov and Tula provinces, and soon Goncharova moved to Moscow to pursue the Fourth Women's Gymnasium in 1892, from which she graduated in 1898. She tried several career paths (zoology, history, botany, and medicine), before deciding on sculpture.
She was accepted by the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in the autumn of 1901, where she studied to become a sculptor under Pavel Trubetskoi, who was associated with the World of Art movement. By 1903, she began exhibiting in major Russian salons, and in 1903–04 she was awarded a silver medal for sculpture. It was at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture that Goncharova met fellow-student Mikhail Larionov, and it was not long before they began sharing a studio and living space.
At the end of the century the gender segregation in the official art institutions was no longer implemented, but still denied women the right to get the diploma upon the completion. She withdrew from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1909, in favor of classes at Ilya Mashkov and Alexander Mikhailovsky's studios, where she was able to study male and female nudes, and was trained the equivalent of what she would have learnt upon completion at the Moscow School had she been male. In 1910, a number of students were expelled from Konstantin Korovin's portrait class for imitating the contemporary style of European Modernism, with Goncharova, Larionov, Robert Falk, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Alexander Kuprin, Ilya Mashkov amongst them.
Participation in avant-garde movements
Jack of Diamonds and Donkey's Tail
The students rejected from Korovin's classes, and others, soon formed Moscow's first radical independent exhibiting group, the Jack of Diamonds, which was named by Larionov. This is a rather provocative name, as it alludes to both boulevard literature and prison uniforms.
The Jack of Diamonds' first exhibition (December 1910–January 1911) included Primitivist and Cubist paintings by Goncharova, but the group split in half in 1912, Mikhail Larionov distancing from Aristarkh Lentulov and Pyotr Konchalovsky and forming a more provocative group, the Donkey's Tail. At the latter group's first exhibition (March–April 1912) organized by Larionov, more than fifty of her paintings were on display. Goncharova drew inspirations for primitivism from Russian icons and folk art, otherwise known as luboks. The Donkey's Tail was conceived as an intentional break from European art influence and the establishment of an independent Russian school of modern art. The exhibition proved controversial, and the censor confiscated Goncharova's religiously-themed work, The Evangelists (1910–11), deeming it blasphemous partly because it was hung at an exhibition titled after the rear end of a donkey, partly because it blended sacred and profane imagery, and also because there were taboos for women to paint icons.
Goncharova and her partner, Larionov, were continuously harassed for their artwork and the way they expressed themselves. However, the influence of Russian Futurism is much in evidence in Goncharova's later paintings. Initially preoccupied with icon painting and the primitivism of ethnic Russian folk-art, Goncharova soon began to mix Cubist and Futurist elements in her work, which led to the beginnings of Cubo-Futurism. In Russia, she was to become famous for her work in this style, such as Cyclist. In 1911, she and Larionov developed Rayonism, and produced many paintings in that style. As leaders of the Russian Futurists, they organized provocative lecture evenings in the same vein as their Italian counterparts. Goncharova was also involved with graphic design—writing, and illustrated several avant-garde books.
Another important exhibition Goncharova participated in is called The Target (March–April 1913) and No. 4 (March–April 1914). She played a very important role when it came to Russian art at the time. Her aesthetic choices that were bridging the Eastern and Western traditions, served as a catalyst for manifestos and art movements at the time. She was one of the leading artists in Cubo-Futurist (Airplane over a Train, 1912) and Rayonist (Yellow and Green Forest, 1913) circles.
Even though her pre-World War I art still had problematic associations, her participation in these exhibits were a segue for Moscow's avant-garde blending of both Western European Modernism and Eastern traditions. In one of her interviews, she said that she got inspiration from Picasso, Le Fauconnier, and Braque, but still her first "Cubist" works to date as long as one year before that.
She was also notorious for her occasionally shocking public behaviour. When Goncharova and Larionov first became interested in Primitivism, they painted hieroglyphics and flowers on their faces and walked through the streets; Goncharova herself sometimes appeared topless in public with symbols on her chest as part of her manifesto "Why We Paint Our Faces".
She exhibited at the Salon d'Automne (Exposition de L'art Russe) in 1906.
Goncharova was a member of the avant-garde Der Blaue Reiter group from its founding in 1911. In 1915, she began to design ballet costumes and sets in Geneva. In 1915 she started work on a series of designs – Six Winged Seraph, Angel, St Andrew, St Mark, Nativity, and others – for a ballet commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev, to be titled Liturgy. Also involved in the project, for which Igor Stravinsky was invited to compose the score, were Larionov and Léonide Massine, but the ballet never materialized. Goncharova moved to Paris in 1921 where she designed a number of stage sets of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. She also exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in 1921, and participated regularly at the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon des Indépendants.
Goncharova also identified with Everythingism (russ. Vsechestvo), the Russian avant-garde movement. Everythingism was considered as an extension of Neo-Primitivism. This art promotes heterogeneity, a blending of multiple cultural traditions, such as West and East and different styles such as Cubism and Futurism. It aspired to erase the boundaries between what is considered the origin and the copy, and assimilated those together. It was an art movement that was free of already set artistic laws.