Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova, 1881-1962

Professor N.L.Okunev, Prague
Thence by decent

J.Bowlt, N.Lobanov-Rostovsky, Khudozhniki russkogo teatra, 1880-1930: sobranie Nikity i Niny Lobanovykh-Rostovskykh, Moscow: Isskustvo, 1994, another set p.120-121

The sheets are a little undulated with some discolouration to the edges. The top and bottom edges are rough-cut. Some spots of staining. Unframed.
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Intended to be a silent ballet based on the Passion of the Christ, Liturgie was never realised. The ballet was to be choreographed by Léonide Massine, and was to be set not to music in the traditional sense but to the sound of rhythmical stamping. Natalia Goncharova, the best-known woman artist of the Russian avant-garde, used some of the theatre designs she created for this unrealised production for an album of sixteen pochoirs, issued in Paris in 1915. They included a mourning Virgin, two angels, a priest, a Roman soldier, a king, a shepherd, and several apostles. Published in a small edition (probably of 35), the complete album is extremely rare.

 

In 1915, the Ballets Russes impresario Serge Diaghilev and his group of close friends and collaborators moved to Lausanne in Switzerland, which remained neutral during the war. It was there that Diaghilev conceived of the production of Liturgie. By that time, Goncharova was a leading member of the Ballets Russes circle, having become famous for her designs for another Diaghilev production—the 1914 opera-ballet Le Coq d'or (The Golden Cockerel).   

 

Despite the novelty of the concept of a silent ballet based on sacred religious episodes, Diaghilev became aware of the difficulty of realising this production. Diaghilev asked the Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti to compose suitable "sounds," but nothing came of it. After being unable to obtain appropriate sacred music from Russia or to persuade Igor Stravinsky to compose a score, the project was finally abandoned.

Goncharova's designs for Liturgie reflect her sustained interest in religious subjects as well as in indigenous Russian art forms, such as icon painting, painted shop signs, medieval manuscripts, and lubki (popular prints). The primitive Italian paintings that Diaghilev and Massine had seen during their travels in Italy in 1914 also served as an important source of inspiration. In a preface to a catalogue written to accompany a solo exhibition of her work, Goncharova explained: "I turn away from the West because for me personally it has dried up and because my sympathies lie with the East. The West has shown me one thing: everything it has is from the East." Realising the significance and value of Russian indigenous artistic traditions, Goncharova brought these elements into a specifically modern context. Her designs for Liturgie are remarkable for their skillful reconciliation of old and new influences on Russian art.