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Overview
In Espagnole (A Spanish woman), Natalia Goncharova has reduced the head of a Spanish woman to flat geometric shapes. You can see the scalloped edges of the woman’s traditional mantilla (lace veil) around her face.
Goncharova left Moscow in 1915 to design sets and costumes for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, travelling to Spain with the company the following year. She was excited by the colourful folk culture and costumes there, and frequently incorporated stylised elements of Spanish life into her work in the 1920s.
By this period, the fallout from the 1917 Russian Revolution had cut Goncharova off from her beloved home country. Distanced from her source of inspiration – Russian peasant life – she looked to Spanish culture as a creative alternative.