Mikhail Larionov

Born 1881 – Died 1964

Larionov was born in Tiraspol, Russia. A painter and theatre designer, in his early career he was one of the leading avant-garde artists in Russia. Together with his life-long companion Natalia Goncharova he experimented with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist techniques. He later sought a fusion between these modern idioms and Russian folk art, in a style that came to be know as ‘Neo-Primitivism’. Around 1912, Larionov and Goncharova developed ‘Rayonism’, a method that acknowledged Futurist and Cubist techniques and focussed on theories of the fourth dimension. Larionov left Russia in 1915 to join up with ballet impresario Serghei Diaghilev, first in Switzerland, and then Paris. He devoted the rest of his career to stage design, executing a number of sets and costumes for Diaghilev productions in the 1920s. He died in Fontenay-aux-Roses, France.