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Art Institute of Chicago

Spanish Dancer

Natalia Goncharova

1920s

Attribution
Natalia Goncharova Born Tula (formerly Russian Empire, now Russia), 1881; died Paris, 1962
Medium
Oil on canvas
Physical dimensions
200.7 × 88.9 cm (79 × 35 in.)
Credit line
Gift of Mrs. Patrick C. Hill in memory of her mother, Rue Winterbotham Carpenter
CATALOGUE RECORD

Museum metadata is available under CC0. Image availability and rights are separate; consult the source record.

Source rights statement: © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

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From the museum

Natalia Goncharova first painted the subject of the Spanish dancer in 1916, while touring Spain as a set and costume designer with Sergei Diaghilev’s traveling ballet company, the Ballets Russes. In this painting, the artist depicted a costume featuring delicate transparencies of lace and floral patterns. Inspired by the local flamenco tradition, Goncharova translated the fabric’s radial lines into the axes formed by the dancer’s hands, which fan outward in geometric vectors, building upon the abstract-cubist style she had developed in Moscow the decade before. After her time in Spain, the artist wrote, “It seems to me that out of all the countries I have visited, this is the only one where there is some hidden energy.”

Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0

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