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.”
Spanish Dancer by Natalia Goncharova, 1920s, Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL)
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