Natalia Goncharova (1881–1962), Russian artist and theatre designer

Natalia Goncharova graduated from the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture where she met her life-long partner, Mikhail Larionov. Her work was at the forefront of the Russian avant-garde movement, but she and Larionov eventually left Russia and began to work with Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. In 1914 she designed the sets and costumes for the opera-ballet Le Coq d’or, choreographed by Mikhail Fokine. Other ballets which she designed for Diaghilev included Fokine’s Sadko and The Firebird, Léonide Massine’s Contes Russes (with Larionov), Marius Petipa’s Aurora’s Wedding, and Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces and Night of the Witches’ Sabbath. After Diaghilev’s death in 1929, Goncharova worked again with Fokine at Colonel de Basil’s Ballet Russe on a major revival of Le Coq d’or, and on the creation of his Cinderella. Goncharova also worked with Boris Kniaseff on ten ballet productions in South America and later designed The Royal Ballet’s major revival of The Firebird in 1954. She died in Paris in 1962.