Natalia Goncharova was a Russian avant-garde artist, painter, costume designer writer, illustrator, and set designer. She was a founding member of both the Jack of Diamonds , Moscow's first radical independent exhibiting group, the more radical Donkey’s Tail, and with Mikhail Larionov invented Rayonism.
Goncharova and her counterpart, Larionov, were continuously harassed for their artwork and the way they expressed themselves. However, the influence of Russian Futurism is much in evidence in Goncharova's later paintings. Initially preoccupied with icon painting and the primitivism of ethnic Russian folk-art, Goncharova soon became famous in Russia for her Cupo-Futurist, such as The Cyclist.
Her painting vastly influenced the avant-garde in Russia. Her exhibition held in Moscow and St. Petersburg were the first promoting a “new” artist by an independent gallery. When it came to the pre-revolutionary period in Russia, where decorative painting and icons were a secure profession, her modern approach to rendering icons were both transgressive and problematic.
Together with Larionov, she left Russia and went to Paris on April 29, 1914. In this year she designed costumes and sets for the Ballets Russes’s premiere in the city. In 1938 Goncharova became a French citizen.