In her painting Self-Portrait with Yellow Lilies (1907-1908) Natalia Goncharova stares directly at the public and smiles beautifully, in her hands a bunch of bright and bold yellow lilies. Goncharova did the portrait when she was just 26 years old, but the painting already embodied the energy and exuberance that characterised her entire oeuvre.
This is just one of the 170 works included in the Goncharova retrospective (the first ever about the Russian avant-garde artist in the UK) currently on at Tate Modern, London (until 8th September 2019).
Born in Ladyjino in 1881, Goncharova was influenced in her art by Russian folk traditions, embroidery patterns and wood carvings.
Her paintings portrayed the cyclical life and labour of Russian peasantry and she used in them a vast profusion of colours.
By the age of 32, Goncharova was a leader of the Moscow avant-garde and was the subject of the first monographic exhibition ever staged by a Russian modernist artist.
She continued challenging the limits of artists, social and gender conventions as time passed and even parading through the streets of Moscow in futurist make up with slashes and scars all over her face.
The artist had a diverse and wide-ranging career: in 1916 Goncharova and her partner Mikhail Larionov moved to Paris and she started collaborating with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes creating sets and costumes for some of the performances of the famous corps de ballet. In Paris the couple met other artists including Picasso and Braque and Goncharova also created clothes and designed posters and interiors.
The exhibition at Tate Modern is a survey of this pioneering artist and features early paintings such as Peasants Picking Apples (1911; former Morozov collection); the monumental seven-part work The Harvest (1911), the triptych Bathers (1922) and some of her scandalous paintings of nudes, the first public display of which led to her trial for obscenity.
But there's also her religious art to rediscover, in particular her four-panel work The Evangelists (1911), acclaimed in London in 1912, but again considered controversial in Russia, so that it had to be removed from display in St Petersburg in 1914.
The heart of the show evokes Goncharova's 1913 retrospective of 800 works at the Mikhailova Art Salon in Moscow, while fashion fans will enjoy more the room dedicated to her work in fashion (Goncharova collaborated with Nadezhda Lamanova, couturier of the Imperial court) and interior design (see the decorative screen Spring commissioned by the Arts Club of Chicago in 1928 and never lent before).
The final room is dedicated to her collaborations with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, the work for which she was best known from 1914 to the 1950s.
This space includes costume sketches, but also designs such as the costumes for Le Coq d'or (The Golden Cockerel) and Les Noces (The Wedding), performed on London stages in the 1920s and 30s, and beautiful illustrations such as the one for the backdrop of "The Firebird" (1926).
The latter features densely populated buildings that call to mind the Kremlin and that symbolise Holy Russia in pre-revolutionary time, and was inspired by Mantegna's frescoes in Mantua.
Fashion designs and costumes were different mediums, but they preserved Goncharova's style and marvellous colours, like those bright flaming reds and oranges that often characterised her paintings, and that ended up inspiring the Parisian couturiers of the time.
The retrospective also allows to analyse some works together, such as Linen, a painting showing a laundry window, from Tate's own collection, and Loom + Woman (The Weaver) from the National Museum of Wales and The Forest from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, all created in the same studio in 1913 and on display together for the first time since then.
As a whole the exhibition is a long journey of discovery through Goncharova's folk scenes, geometrical forms and experiments with modernist styles such as futurism and abstraction.
Through the journey visitors will be able to see peasants in traditional Russian costumes harvesting and dancing, their bodies often rendered as stark shapes outlined in black; a cyclist surrounded by a futurist forest of symbols and numbers; dark and ominous cubist cityscapes with apartment blocks and factory chimneys, and the sort of clothes that fairytale creatures may wear (see the costumes for Sadko). They represent a rich and complex body of work that urges a reawakeaning of the senses.
Think you may miss Goncharova's exhibition in London? Don't despair, it will travel to Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, where it will open on 28th September 2019, and will then arrive to the Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki, on 21st February 2020.
Image credits for this post
Natalia Goncharova (1881- 1962)
Self-Portrait with Yellow Lilies 1907-1908
Oil paint on canvas
775 x 582 mm
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Purchased 1927
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019
Natalia Goncharova (1881- 1962)
Peasant Woman from Tula Province 1910
Oil paint on canvas
1035 x 730 mm
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Bequeathed by A.K. Larionova-Tomilina 1989
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019
Natalia Goncharova (1881- 1962)
Harvest: Angels Throwing Stones on the City 1911
Oil paint on canvas
1000 x 1290 mm
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Bequeathed by A.K. Larionova-Tomilina 1989
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019
Natalia Goncharova at Tate Modern, 2019. Photo: © Tate Photography (Matt Greenwood)
Natalia Goncharova (1881- 1962)
Design with birds and flowers. Study for textile design for House of Myrbor 1925-1928
Gouache and graphite on embossed paper
745 x 670 mm
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Bequeathed by A.K. Larionova-Tomilina, Paris 1989
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019
Natalia Goncharova (1881- 1962)
Peasant woman. Costume design for Le Coq d'Or 1937
Watercolour, bronze paint and graphite on paper
455 x 300 mm
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Presented by E. Kurnan 1983
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019
Natalia Goncharova (1881- 1962)
Bathers 1922
Oil paint on canvas
2600 x 1990 mm
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Bequeathed by A.K. Larionova-Tomilina, Paris 1989
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019
Natalia Goncharova (1881- 1962)
Linen 1913
Oil paint on canvas
956 x 838 mm
Tate. Presented by Eugène Mollo and the artist 1953
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019
Installation view, Natalia Goncharova at Tate Modern, 2019. Photo: © Tate Photography (Matt Greenwood)
Natalia Goncharova (1881- 1962)
Cyclist 1913
Oil paint on canvas
780 x 1050mm
State Russian Museum
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019
Natalia Goncharova (1881- 1962)
Peasants Picking Apples 1911
Oil paint on canvas
1045 x 980 mm
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Received from the Museum of Artistic Culture 1929
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019
Natalia Goncharova (1881- 1962)
Orange Seller 1916
Oil paint on canvas
1310 x 970 mm
Museum Ludwig
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019
Natalia Goncharova
Screen, 1928
Natalia Goncharova at Tate Modern, 2019. Photo: © Tate Photography (Matt Greenwood)
Natalia Goncharova (1881- 1962)
Set design for the final scene of The Firebird 1954
Graphite and gouache on paper
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019
Natalia Goncharova (1881- 1962)
Two female dancers (half-length). Choreography design for Les Noces c.1923
Ink and paint on paper
250 x 250 mm
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019
Installation view, Natalia Goncharova at Tate Modern, 2019. Photo: © Tate Photography (Matt Greenwood)
Natalia Goncharova (1881- 1962)
Theatre costume for Sadko in Sadko 1916
1850 x 850 x 650 mm
Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Given by the British Theatre Museum Association
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019
Installation view, Natalia Goncharova at Tate Modern, 2019. Photo: © Tate Photography (Matt Greenwood)
Comments