Natalia Goncharova

Natalia Goncharova was a Russian avant-garde painter, costume designer, illustrator, set designer, and founding member of Der Blaue Reiter during the turn of the 20th century. Along with her lifelong romantic partner, Mikhail Larionov, she pioneered the colorful, abstract, Russian style known as Rayonism. Her work merged Russian folk art with Impressionist, Fauvist, and Futurist influence and often subjected simple rural peasants or, antithetically, strange, celestial characters. Goncharova’s geometric, colorful forms offered surreal and abstract imagery imbued with spiritual, almost religious energy.