Rayonism
Started: 1911
Ended: 1914
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THE ART STORY
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KEY ARTISTS
 | Mikhail Larionov Quick View Further External Info  |
| Mikhail Larionov |  |
| Mikhail Larionov was a Russian avant-garde painter and the founder of Rayonism, the first movement that celebrated Russian abstract painting. Larionov was also a major promoter of Post-Impressionist and Neo-Primitive art during the early twentieth century, and helped widen the international appeal of artists like Matisse, Van Gogh, and Gauguin. Further External Info | ||
 | Natalia Goncharova Quick View Artist Page |
| Natalia Goncharova | |
| Goncharova was part of the Russian avant garde generation involved in a relentless exploration of different visual styles. She also co-founded Rayonism with her life partner Mikhail Larionov. Art Story: Natalia Goncharova Artist Page | ||
"Long live the beautiful East!...Long live nationality! Long live the style of rayonist painting that we created - free from concrete forms, existing and developing according to painterly laws."
Summary of Rayonism
Considered the pinnacle of avant-garde art by the founders Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova, Rayonism (sometimes translated from Russian as Rayism) developed new ways to express energy and movement. From its conception as a subset of Russian Futurism, Rayonism drew from scientific discoveries and the theoretical conceptions of the fourth dimension. The movement was very self-consciously modern, even as it incorporated elements of traditional folk culture. It was also fiercely nationalistic, projecting itself as a distinctly Russian style, despite its obvious inspiration from European movements including Cubism, Orphism, German Expressionism, and Futurism.
Key Ideas
Beginnings:
The brainchild of life-long partners Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova, Rayonism synthesized elements of Russian avant-garde painting to create a deliberately modern style. As Russian Futurists associated with the Knave of Diamonds (also known as the Jack of Diamonds) group, they had experimented with Neo-primitivism, which recovered traditional motifs in a style that tried to replicate the naïveté of folk art, along with Russian Cubo-Futurism, which blended Cubist distortion with depictions of movement. In 1912, when Larionov and Goncharova broke with the Knave of Diamonds group to stage The Donkey's Tail exhibition, they rejected the notion of stylistic unity and included a broad range of work. This pluralism would remain part of Rayonism, even as the artists began to define general themes of the style. In part, scientific writings on the discovery of radioactive rays and x-rays were instrumental to their depictions of dynamic time and space (Larionov had most likely read Marie Curie's Radioactivity and The Discovery of Radium, both recently published in Russia).
Important Art and Artists of Rayonism | |
 Artwork Images | Peacock in Bright Sunlight (Egyptian Style) (1911)Artist: Natalia Goncharova Artwork description & Analysis: This painting is one of a series on peacocks, where Goncharova combines elements of the primitive styles of Egyptian and Russian folk art with Rayonist abstraction. The result reflects the juxtapositions and contradictions common to the style, as she freely mixed ancient and modern influences. Showing the peacock's head and neck in profile, she borrows the composite pose (common in Egyptian art), which allowed for the greatest amount of information to be described in simple contours. Likewise, the tail is spread out in a frontal view, to highlight the defining characteristic of the subject. The blocks of brilliant color suggest Russian folk painting and decorative arts. Their non-descriptive, unrealistic hues transform the recognizable shape of the peacock's plumage into an abstract array of color. Oil on canvas - The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow |
 Artwork Images | Old-Fashioned Love (1912)Artist: Mikhail Larionov Artwork description & Analysis: The literary concept of Zaum poetry, comprised of nonsensical sounds that assaulted traditional language structures, was embraced by the Russian avant-garde as a means of breaking with the past. Like the Italian Futurists, who were contemporaneously adopting similar approaches in their poetry, the intent was to create a wholly modern, sensorial alternative. Alliances with sympathetic visual artists, such as this collaboration between Kruchenykh, a radical Russian Futuristic poet, and Larionov, were common. Book with lithographs and lithographed text on cream wove paper - Art Institute of Chicago |
 Artwork Images | Cockerel and Hen (1912)Artist: Mikhail Larionov Artwork description & Analysis: In this work of Realistic Rayonism, the artist depicts a dynamic rooster in rays of red and gold; a hen, barely identifiable, appears in golden planes of color beside it. While the objects of the painting are discernable, the true subject, however, is their merging with the background space and their disillusion into rays of light and vectors of energy. This is particularly evident in the left half of the painting, as the lines of reflected light intersect in a chaos of dynamic force lines. Oil on canvas - The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow |
More Rayonism Artwork and Analysis:
Content compiled and written by Rebecca Seiferle
Edited and revised, with Synopsis and Key Ideas added by Sarah Archino
" Movement Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Rebecca Seiferle
Edited and revised, with Synopsis and Key Ideas added by Sarah Archino
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First published on 22 Sep 2017. Updated and modified regularly. 
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