Natalia GoncharovaRussian, 1881–1962Прачки
Can I see it?
Yes, on view now
Where is “Прачки” now? State Russian Museum, Korpus Benua, Zal 74, Saint Petersburg. Yes, on view now. Checked September 28, 2026.
Closed· opens tomorrow at 10:00 AM
On public display.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the painting
Museum text in Russian
Полотно принадлежит к числу самых совершенных творений Гончаровой на стадии неопримитивизма. В них сюжеты из жизни простых людей лишились традиционных для русской живописи социальных оценок. Художница питала интерес к «от века» повторяющимся занятиям женщин — жатве, сбору урожая, белению холста, стирке белья и так далее.
Read on
Лишенные пространной повествовательности и «вневременные», эти сцены с их самоуглубленными, как бы священнодействующими героинями воспринимаются как своеобразный, идущий из древности торжественный ритуал. Этому ощущению способствуют и сдержанный колорит, и утяжеленность намеренно «упрощенных» форм рук, ног, фигур персонажей. В подобной стилистике исследователи творчества Наталии Гончаровой порой усматривают влияние «таитянских» полотен Поля Гогена. Между тем она отражает увлечение художницы русским лубком и архаической пластикой древних скифов — «каменными бабами», которых и в середине ХХ века еще находили в степях южной России. Русский музей . От иконы до современности . СПб . 2015. С . 2 96.
State Russian Museum
Details
- Accession number
- ЖБ-1321
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- State Russian Museum
- Image: State Russian Museum — © State Russian Museum
In the life of Natalia Goncharova
The whole life1909
Leaves the Moscow School
Goncharova stopped paying her fees and was struck off the rolls of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. By other accounts she withdrew of her own accord, and in 1910 she, Larionov, Falk, Konchalovsky and Mashkov were expelled from Korovin's portrait class for imitating European Modernism.
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.
