Christ-loving Warriors 1914

Natalia Goncharova made this small, but powerful, black and white print called “Christ-loving Warriors” with ink on paper. It's all about the lines, isn't it? The bold, assertive strokes feel so immediate, like she attacked the paper with the ink, wrestling the image into existence. I imagine Goncharova, hunched over her work, totally absorbed in the act of mark-making. Maybe she felt a sense of urgency, or determination, as she channeled the divine and the earthly onto the page. The marching soldiers with the angels hovering above them. How does she make these figures so solid and ethereal at the same time? The repetition of the lines creates this rhythm, this forward momentum, but it’s also full of tension, like a prelude to some unknown event. It’s a conversation with tradition, like Russian Orthodox iconography, but with a totally modern twist. That kind of dialogue is what keeps art alive.