[GRAND BAL DE NUIT / SALLE BULLIER GRAND BAL DES ARTISTES]. 1926.
47 1/4x31 1/2 inches, 120x80 cm. Joseph-Charles, Paris. Condition A-: small losses and abrasions at edges; unobtrusive punch holes at right edge. Mounted on Japan.
The emigrant Russian artistic community in Montparnasse became very active in the years before World War I 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-Korsakov's revolutionary Coq d'Or, to her final creations for the Marquis de Cuevas Ballet, in 1948. Like avant-garde painter Mikhail Larionov in 1923, Gontcharova designed the poster for the artists' ball at Bullier in 1926. Using black, brown, and orange cut-outs, she built a graphically-complex, cubist-inspired design of what looks like two figures crouched under a tree. This is the version before letters. Weill 322, Le Peintre et L'Affiche, Union des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, 1988, p. 69, Plakat Kunst p. 94, Kunstler Plakate p. 9.
![NATALIA GONTCHAROVA (1881-1962). [GRAND BAL DE NUIT / SALLE BULLIER GRAND BAL DES ARTISTES]. 1926. 47¼x31½ inches, 120x80 cm. Joseph-C](https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/full//183\795183.jpg)
