Postcards

24 March 1910

First solo show and a charge of pornography

At the club of the Society of Free Aesthetics Goncharova showed 22 paintings for a single day; after an anonymous notice in the newspaper “Golos Moskvy” the police seized two “Models” and the painting “God”, and she was charged with pornography.

December 1910 – January 1911

First Jack of Diamonds exhibition

The first show of the Jack of Diamonds — Moscow's first radical independent exhibiting group, named by Larionov — included Goncharova's Primitivist and Cubist paintings.

1911

Develops Rayonism with Larionov

Goncharova and Larionov developed Rayonism and painted many works in the style (elsewhere Rayonism is dated 1912–1914).

March – April 1912

The Donkey's Tail: over fifty paintings

More than fifty of her paintings hung at the first Donkey's Tail exhibition, which Larionov organised as a break with European influence; the censor confiscated “The Evangelists” as blasphemous.

autumn 1913

Solo show on Bolshaya Dmitrovka

Goncharova's largest solo show (together with the spring show in St Petersburg, over 700 works of 1900–1913) closed with the first catalogue-monograph on her and Larionov, edited by I. M. Zdanevich; its preface carries the famous words about turning away “from the West” to the East, whose authorship is disputed.

1914

Designs “The Golden Cockerel” for Diaghilev

On Alexandre Benois's recommendation Diaghilev invited Goncharova to design the opera-ballet “The Golden Cockerel”; after its first performances in Paris and London succeeded, their collaboration continued.