Lot 264 D

Our large-format piece is an impressive example of Natalia Goncharova's abstract compositions from the 1950s, in which she once again concerned herself closely with the cosmos.

In the 1910s, the Russian avant-garde set out to render the invisible visible - taking an approach that straddled the natural sciences and spiritism. In particular the iconoclastic compositions of the Suprematists and Constructivists (one need think only of Malevich, Rodchenko, El Lissitzky or Goncharova) with their planes in an empty space attest to an explicit interest in topics such as the cosmos and the 4th dimension, something that was swiftly to take a backseat after the impact of the changing political conditions in Russia of the 1920s. Goncharova's oeuvre also changed as a result, she dedicated herself increasingly to theater, designed stage sets and costumes, painted her well-known Spanish women, and then found her way back into space in the 1950s with her “Sputnik” works and spatial compositions.
While at the beginning of the century, discoveries such as Einstein's relativity theory, which drove the zeitgeist, it was now space travel which inspired the artist and prompted her new and last images of the heavens. It seems almost as if in these late works by Goncharova we can sense that specific visionary quality that occultist and esoteric P. D. Ouspensky (who was revered by many representatives of the Russian avant-garde) had called on the contemporary artist to show.