Natalia Goncharova

(July 3, 1881 – October 17, 1962) Russian avant-garde artist, painter, costume designer, writer, illustrator, and set designer. Goncharova's lifelong partner was fellow Russian avant-garde artist Mikhail Larionov. She was a founding member of both the Jack of Diamonds (1909–1911), Moscow's first radical independent exhibiting group, the more radical Donkey's Tail (1912–1913), and with Larionov invented Rayonism (1912–1914). She was also a member of the Germany-based art movement Der Blaue Reiter. Born in Russia, she moved to Paris in 1921 and lived there until her death. Her painting vastly influenced the avant-garde in Russia. Her exhibitions held in Moscow and St. Petersburg (1913 and 1914) were the first promoting a “new” artist by an independent gallery. When it came to the pre-revolutionary period in Russia, where decorative painting and icons were a secure profession, her modern approach to rendering icons were both transgressive and problematic. Her work is usually considered too culturally specific to her Slavic heritage to be universally figured as avant-garde.