Natalia Goncharova (1881–1962)

Goncharova N. Peasants. From the Picking Grapes nine-part polyptych. 1911

In 1911, Natalia Goncharova painted two nine-part compositions — Picking Grapes and Reaping. Only four fragments of Picking Grapes have survived — Dancing Peasants (private collection, Paris), Feasting Peasants (Tret. Gal.), Peasant Women Carrying Grapes (Tret. Gal.) and Peasants (Russ. Mus.). These four canvases are united by their common monumental and emotional power, underlining the sacral and epic concept of the composition, which is linked to Gospel motifs.

Goncharova N. Laundresses. 1911

Laundresses is one of Natalia Goncharova’s classical, mature Neo-Primitive paintings. The artist herself defined the sources of such works as the “Scythian stone images and painted wooden dolls sold at fairs.” Goncharova went further than many of her contemporaries and confederates in her aspiration to perceive and rework the devices of the folk masters. She did not so much stylise or imitate as borrow the very specifics of folk creativity — its impersonal power, monumentality and bewitching sacral profundity.

Goncharova N. Cyclist. 1913

Cyclist is often regarded as one of the archetypal works of Futurist painting, both in Natalia Goncharova’s oeuvre as a whole and the Russian art of the early 1910s in general. It embodies such typical features of Futurism as constant repetition, dislocation of the contours of the figure, which seems to be recorded in temporal and spatial sequence, and the interspersion of fragments of street signs, in order to convey the bustle, noise and movement of the city. The composition of the painting is, however, horizontally and vertically balanced and assiduously regulated, thereby distinguishing it from the classical works of Futurism.