Natalia Goncharova

A pioneering avant-garde artist, Goncharova was best known for her radical contributions to Modern art in the early 20th century. She was a key figure in the Russian avant-garde movement, co-founding Rayonism along with the influential Jack of Diamonds and the more radical Donkey’s Tail artist groups, challenging academic conventions and championing native Russian styles over Western traditions.

Born in 1881 in Imperial Russia, she was raised in a cultured, aristocratic family and began her studies at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1901. Soon turning her attention to painting, she quickly flourished and began exhibiting in major Russian salons in 1903, being awarded a silver medal for sculpture in 1904.

Goncharova’s early work was heavily influenced by Russian folk art and the traditional crafts of her rural upbringing which she reinterpreted with a modernist sensibility. By the 1910s, she was experimenting with Cubism, Futurism and her own style that emphasised light rays and abstract forms, which she called Rayonism.

Her work during this period was often controversial, especially her religious paintings which were denounced by the Orthodox Church, but led her to become the first avant-garde artist of any gender to have a major exhibition at a Moscow museum when she showed over 800 works at the Mikhailova Art Salon in 1913.

In 1921, Goncharova moved to Paris and exhibited at the Salon d’Automne that same year, followed by regular showings at the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon des Indépendants. Though she remained in France for the rest of her life, her work continued to engage with Russian themes, bridging Eastern and Western art traditions.