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1915

Revised Curtain Design for the Ballet "Les Noces"

Natalia Sergeyevna Goncharova

Russian (active Moscow and Paris), 1881 - 1962

Goncharova’s designs for the 1914 ballet-opera Le Coq d’Or (The Golden Cockerel) were considered a radical assault on cultured tastes. The jarring color, crude drawing, and ornamental exuberance of her décors exploded onto the stage with the ribald revelry of a peasant festival. Describing a village wedding, Les Noces was to be a follow-up to the sensational success of Le Coq d’Or, but it was finally staged only in 1923 in a completely revised form. Two firebirds of folk legend escort the wedding cortege on this curtain design.

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Natalia Sergeyevna Goncharova, Revised Curtain Design for the Ballet "Les Noces", 1915 | Philadelphia Museum of Art