NATALIA GONTCHAROVA. (1881-1962) [GRAND BAL DE NUIT / SALLE BULLIER GRAND BAL DES ARTISTES.] Before letters. 1926. 451/2x301/2 inches. [Joseph-Charles, Paris.] Condition A: minor creases in top margin. Hand signed by the artist. The emigrant Russian artistic community in Montparnasse became very active in the years before World War One and the large ball they hosted every year in order to raise money for their association was one of the highlights of the Parisian avant-garde season. Gontcharova was the very rich, eccentric granddaughter of Alexander Pushkin, who lived her extravagant life with her partner Mikhail Larianov. A Diaghilev devotee, she dedicated most of her considerable artistic talents to stage and costume design. She worked for the most prestigious theaters, operas, and ballet companies, from Rimsky Korsakof's revolutionary Coq d'Or, to her final creations for the Marquis de Cuevas Ballet, in 1948. Like Larionov in 1923, Gontcharova designed the poster for the artists' ball at Bullier in 1926. Using black, brown, and orange vut-outs, she has built a graphically-complex, cubist-inspired design of what looks like two figures crouched under a tree. Only a few copies before lettering are known. ref. The Poster, Alain Weill, p.190,Le Peintre et L'Affiche, Union des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, 1988, p. 69.
![NATALIA GONTCHAROVA. (1881-1962) [GRAND BAL DE NUIT / SALLE BULLIER GRAND BAL DES ARTISTES.] Before letters. 1926. 45x30 inches. [Josep](https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/full//083\541083.jpg)
