Natalia Goncharova and the Advant-garde at palazzo Strozzi

A year after Marina Abramovich, another woman becomes protagonist at Palazzo Strozzi: Natalia Goncharova, one of the main representatives of the Russian avant-garde, and first female artist to be established internationally.
Versatile and talented woman, Natalia was a painter, costume designer, illustrator, graphic designer, scenographer, decorator, stylist, film actress and already a performing artist at her time.
She assimilated the language of western art by studying Matisse, Gauguin, Picasso and the leading exponents of avant-garde movements, enriching it with her own cultural baggage and recovering symbols and icons of her Russia.

The countryside, which she loved so much, is often present in her paintings, through women in traditional dresses and wheat harvest scenes, in whose representation we can see the fauve influence in the bright colors, and a formal research that looks to Matisse at times, to Futurism and Rayonism at others. The latter, an artistic movement of Russian origin, developed by Natalia and Mikhail Larionov, her life-time partner and colleague, met in 1901.

Therefore on display next to her are the great masters who inspired her art: Matisse, Gauguin, Picasso, Lautrec, Derain, Cézanne and many others.

Among these we also find the works of Mikhail Larionov, with whom Natalia, an extremely modern woman, had no problem carrying out an open relationship until 1955; year in which they decided to marry only in order to ensure the other's legacy of their works in the event of death.

Of particularly interest is the room dedicated to works created for the theater and Russian ballet: refined and colorful sketches, and magnificent stage costumes of exquisite oriental taste.
The exhibition itinerary starts with the presentation of those who influenced Natalia's work, and then recounts Russia as seen through her eyes, religious icons, war, theater and femininity.
Natalia Goncharova never let her being a woman leave her on the margins of the art world, on the contrary, she made her femininity her strenght, becoming a leading figure of the Russian avant-garde and a model for her generation.
A rich display, this, rich in color and content, which promises to be one of the most interesting exhibitions of the season.