Natalia Goncharova
Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova (Russian: Наталья Сергеевна Гончарова; June 4, 1881 – October 17, 1962) was 
a Gender Equality in the Gender Equality in the Gender Equality in the Russian Federationn Federation avant-garde artist (Cubo-Futurism), painter and costume designer. She is currently considered ‘the most expensive woman in art’, with her painting, “Picking Apples” (1909) selling at Christie’s Modern and Impressionist sale in 2007 for 4.9 million pounds. The year after, her 1912 still-life The Flowers beat this record, selling for US$10.8 million.
Larionov and her role in the Russian Avant-Garde
Natalia Goncharova was born in Nagaevo village near Tula, Russia in 1881. She studied sculpture at the Moscow Academy of Art, but turned to painting in 1904. She was deeply inspired by the primitive aspects of Russian folk art and attempted to emulate it in her own work while incorporating elements of fauvism and cubism.
Goncharova and Michail Larionov were prominent figures in the pre-Revolutionary Moscow avant-garde, a circle in which women commanded an unusual degree of freedom and respect. Goncharova was a radical both in art and life. She and Larionov lived together for decades as an unmarried couple. (They finally married in 1955 to ensure that whoever survived the other could inherit his or her paintings.) Larionov was very interested in tattooing. Together with her husband, she first developed Rayonism and organised the Donkey’s Tail exhibition of 1912 and showing with the Der Blaue Reiter in Munich the same year. 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. Initially preoccupied with icon painting and the primitivism of ethnic Russian folk-art, Goncharova became famous in Russia for her Futurist work such as The Cyclist and her later Rayonnist works. In addition, Goncharova was a member of the Der Blaue Reiter avant-garde group from its founding in 1911.
Paris
In 1915, she moved to Paris where she designed the sets for the Ballets Russes production of “Le Coq d’Or,” 
choreographed by Michel Fokine. When the war broke out, the couple went back to Russia for Larionov to do his military service, but they returned to Paris in 1917. There, they continued to support themselves by working for Diaghilev, and Goncharova gave painting lessons. Among her students were Gerald and Sara Murphy, whom she introduced to Diaghilev and Stravinsky. They experienced great poverty during the 1930s, complicated by the fact that most of their earlier paintings were in Russia, which they could not access.
Goncharova and Larionov lived in Paris until she died in 1962. She became a French citizen in 1939.
Posterity
For art historians, the resurgence in interest in Goncharova in the West is accompanied by questions on why she remains so little well-known. Her marriage to Larionov may have played a role; especially since Larionov’s second wife had control of Goncharova’s work, and sold them predominantly to Russian galleries.
Furthermore, as art critic Charlotte Douglas, asks: “the question remains why female artists in early 20th-century Moscow, ostensibly a conservative and authoritarian society, produced more prominent women artists — Goncharova, Alexandra Exter, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, and Nadezhda Udaltsova — than early 20th-century Paris or London. It’s an eternal question among art historians: Why, when women in the West were so discriminated against, the women in Russia amongst the avant-garde were not, both before and after the Revolution”.
References
- “Who Was Natalia Goncharova?”. The New York Sun. 2007-06-26. http://www.nysun.com/article/57312. Retrieved 2007-03-07.
- Vogel, Carol (2008-06-25). “A Monet Sets a Record: $80.4 Million”. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/arts/design/25auct.html?em&ex=1214625600&en=49db27f2e86469c1&ei=5087%0A. Retrieved 2008-06-26.
See Also
- Gender Equality in the Gender Equality in the Gender Equality in the Russian Federationn Federation
- National Association of Women Artists
External Links
- The New York Sun Culture