Costume for a Ballerine Dancer by Natalia Gontcharova, Watercolor and Pencil

Natalia Gontcharova (Russian, 1881-1962) was born in Ladyshino near Tula in central Russia in 1881. She moved to Moscow to attend school in 1892, where she met Mikhail Larionov, who encouraged her to paint and became her lifelong companion. The following year, she enrolled at the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture to study sculpture. Goncharova participated in an exhibition of Russian artists organized by Sergei Diaghilev at the 1906 Salon d'Automne in Paris. Her early work shows the influence of Impressionism, Fauvism, and Russian folk sculpture. By 1910 she had traveled to Paris and along with Larionov had begun to be heavily involved in Russian avant-garde circles. Together they evolved a neo-primitive style that was favored in the years shortly before the outbreak of the war. Goncharova participated in numerous important exhibitions of new art in Moscow. While she favored Primitivist and Cubist styles, she adopted Cubo-Futurist and Rayonist-for which she credited as a founder of- styles around 1912. She was represented at the second Blau Reiter exhibition in 1912 and the 'Erste deutsche Herbstsalon at the Der Sturm gallery in Berlin in 1913. Around this time, she and Larionov began their collaboration with Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes, which lasted until the impresario's death in 1929. By 1913, Goncharove, along with Larionov, had turned her attention to a more abstract style, heavily influenced by Italian Futurism and French Cubism; together they evolved a style known as Rayonnism. In 1914 they traveled to Paris at the invitation of Serge Diaghiliv to collaborate on costumes and designs for the Ballet Russe. She settled permanently in Paris in 1917, and became a French citizen in 1938. She exhibited in Moscow, Paris, London and Brussels. She married Larionov in 1955. She died in Paris in 1962.