NATALIJA GONCAROVA

The USSR of the beginning of the 20th century was an actual open laboratory of artistic innovation in all fields and disciplines, from the art to the theatre, from music to poetry.

Natalija Gonĉarova, (1881/1962) painter, illustrator and costume designer of great talent and versatility, belonged to this wonderful generation devastated by the October Revolution.

She was Puskin’s wife grandnephew, he was the national poet par excellence and she was married to Michail Larianov, vanguard artist, in contact with the greatest artistic personalities of his period, promoter of art movements and exhibitions, from the Russian futurism to the “Rayonism”.

She has worked with him all her life long, in a collaboration that lasted also after they split.

In 1917 she moves to Paris, thanks to the famous producer Sergej Djagilev who took his Russian ballet company to the French capital, revolutionizing for ever the dance image and world. She will create for him extraordinary costumes, with her unmistakable style based on the Russian iconographic tradition.

Natalija indeed has always mixed up a new kind of attention for the tradition with the popular art of prints and fabrics, with surprising cuts and creative solutions, showing once again that past and future con meet.