The Engine

NATALIA GONCHAROVA AT THE TATE MODERN 10 th of June 2019 Natalia Goncharova (1881 – 1962) was born in Tula province, Russia, 200 miles from Moscow in 1881.  Her career encompassed the Russian avante garde, she was involved in painting, lithography, design and later in her career worked as a set and costume designer for Diaghalev’s Ballet Russe .  Her family were impoverished aristocrats who made their living from textiles.  Goncharova was familiar with the creation of textiles in all stages of their production.  She was initially motivated by her interest in traditional Russian forms of art and design, rejecting western models.  She collected traditional Russian icons, paintings and designs avidly and later in her life campaigned for their preservation, just as Stalin’s project of collectivisation sought to wipe them out.  Her work Peasant Woman from Tula Province (1910, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow) illustrates these interests in tradi...

EDVARD MUNCH AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM 11 th of June 2019 This exhibition at the British museum concentrates on Munch's work beyond painting as he sought to use lithographs, woodcuts and other media.   Intricate technical details of these processes are provided to indicate the diversity of Munch’s artistic methods.   While he experimented, he also tended to go back to oil painting as his first point of reference.   He used these other forms in order to make his work more accessible to the general public. Edvard Munch (1863-1944) began his artistic career in Kristiania, the former name for Oslo, capital of Norway.   Munch was a member of the Kristiania Bohemia, a group of artists, writers and intellectuals who met in clubs in the city to discuss ideas, new movements in ideas and the arts and presumably to drink absinthe, the preferred drug of the avante garde of that time.   An early lithograph represents Hans Jaeger (1854-1910), a member of the Kristiania B...