The Telegraph: From female nudes to the Ballet Russe: Natalia Goncharova, the avant-garde rebel painter

By Rosamund Bartlett

1 June 2019

On March 24 1910, in the heart of old Moscow, the plush surroundings of a club for the cultural elite became the scene of a scandal. In the space of a few years, the Free Aesthetics Society had achieved renown for its weekly meetings devoted to contemporary poetry, music and art. On this occasion there was to be a lecture, and the first solo exhibition of a young artist.

It was a one-day event for members only, but word had got out, and a journalist of the old school bribed a member of staff in order to gain entry, intent on exposing the decadence of this den of aesthetes. In the next morning’s paper, he denounced as an abomination the 20 or so paintings on show, singling out a few that, in his…

Read the full article in The Telegraph.