Natalia Goncharova

Goncharova is a Russian born avant-garde artist, costume and set designer. She was much influenced by the Fauvist and Cubist movement. Her paintings of that period are striking in the form echoing the style of other leading fauvists and cubists with a colour palette that is bright and vibrant.

This image of a machine is lively and full of detail, filling the canvas. The eye is drawn to the plum coloured handles that bisect the image and lead the eye to the magenta cup shapes on left and right of the image. The firey orange components and bolts are brightened further by being surrounded with contrasting rich violet and blues. The image is vibrant with colour and dynamic with a sense of movement.

This abstract painting called Cats (1913) is a potent image. I find the contrast of yellows and ochres with black and greys striking. The word striking is also an element of the form of claws that I see, in combat and striking out at each other. The sharp needle shapes intersecting creating right angles, some shaded gives a very jagged contour to the piece. The elements of magenta perhaps representing the cats mouths, also add more vibrancy and life. I am struck that the position of the magenta elements are similar in position to the magenta cups in the previous image. The choice of subject in politically precarious times, on the brink of world war, is also loaded with meaning. The combat of primal forces, claw to claw and mouth to mouth. 

This image, Gardening (1908) is a much gentler scene and painted in a time that was less torrid despite the tensions building between countries. The subject and depiction is a sharp contrast with Cats. The colour palette is calm in blues, mauves and sandy brown accents. It is a scene of collaboration, industry and tending beautiful things, and yet there is something back breaking in the pose of the woman in the foreground on the right. It has a flavour of Van Goghs paintings of the peasant farmers in the potato fields. The flow of lines, the bold colours and subject.