Natalia Goncharova.
A Woman of the Avant-garde with Gauguin, Matisse and Picasso

Palazzo Strozzi celebrates Natalia Goncharova, a leading female artist of the 20^th century, in a major retrospective. The exhibition will explore her unconventional life and career, presenting her rich and multifaceted artistic output with masterpieces from major international collections by celebrated artists including Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso, Balla and Boccioni.

Taking visitors on a journey from the Russian countryside to Moscow and Paris, the exhibition features 130 artworks and gives an account of the unorthodox life of a woman who lived for her art and successfully forged her own unique fusion of tradition and innovation, of East and West, making her own work a unique example of experimentation with artistic genres and styles ranging from New-Primitivism to Rayonisme, painting and graphic art to her work for the theatre.

The exhibition is promoted and organised by Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and Tate Modern, London, in collaboration with Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki. With the support of Comune di Firenze, Regione Toscana, Camera di Commercio di Firenze. With the contribution by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze. In collaboration with Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut and with Dipartimento di Formazione, Lingue, Intercultura, Letterature e Psicologia - Sezione di Slavistica, Università degli studi di Firenze.

Palazzo Strozzi and Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut collaborated in the creation of the videos, which were curated by Federica Rossi, shown in the exhibition. The videos evoke the atmosphere of the Natalia Goncharova’s Russia and present her work with Serge Diaghilev, the ballet impresario and founder of Ballets Russes (the enterprise that made Russian ballet world-famous).

To create the three videos Natalia’s Russia, Natalia and the Ballets Russes, and The orthodox religion at the turn of the 19^th century (video montage by Francesco Faralli), archive materials dating from the first part of the 20^th century, from French, Russian and Australian institutions and private archives were used.

Film sequences, extracts from Soviet famous films such as The Old and the New (by Sergei Eisenstein and Grigorij Aleksandrov, 1929) and Women of Ryazan (by Olga Preobrazhenskaya and Ivan Pravov, 1927), are also on display.

The videos will also be exhibited at the Casa Museo dell’Antiquariato “Ivan Bruschi” in Arezzo as part of the exibition Incanti. Episodi della pittura europea al tempo delle avanguardie (5 October 2019 - 12 January 2020).