Portrait of Diaghilev

Goncharova, born in 1881 in the Russian Empire, started her artistic career as a sculptor but found her unique way of expression in painting. She was already exhibiting, when her productive partnership with Sergei Diaghilev, an art critic and ballet impresario,began in 1906. This led to Goncharova’s, and her friend and future husband Mikhail Larionov’s, works being presented in the exhibition of Russian artists at the Salon d’Automne in Paris.

Later, in 1914, they started to collaborate on Diaghilev’s Paris production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera ‘Coq d’or’, where Goncharova was designing the set and costumes for the performances. She applied a constructivist approach to the design, using principles of abstractionism rather than aspiring to copy the reality – a practice in line with other avant-garde artists’ methods of the time. [1]

Goncharova continued working together with Larionov and Diaghilev for the further impresario’s theatrical productions. During the War, they toured Spain and Italy. In 1919, Goncharova and Larionov produced a book, L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne (Paris 1919): twelve pages of painting, which the ‘Portrait of Diaghilev’, traditionally known as “Grimes”, was specifically created for. [2] The duo’s theatre and ballet design involvement remained active until Sergei Diaghilev’s death in 1929. After this shocking event Goncharova kept on painting and worked in both Europe and America. Her style was swaying between naturalistic and abstract approaches depending on the subject and context she was depicting, which can be seen as a representation of her versatile mastery.

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