Rayonism

Rayonism (also Rayism or Rayonnism) was the first Russian movement toward pure abstraction, developed in Moscow by the Cubo-Futurists Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova between 1910 and 1914. Its premise was that a painting should show not objects but the intersecting rays of light reflecting from them - an idea Larionov linked to the science of his day: radioactivity, X-rays, ultraviolet light. The Rayonist Manifesto, written in 1912 and published the following year, declared painting free from realistic form, existing and developing according to its own pictorial laws. The style was unveiled publicly at the landmark 1913 Target exhibition and briefly extended into face-painting manifestos and design. Short-lived - it ended with the outbreak of World War I - Rayonism was nonetheless a crucial step in Russian abstract art, its crisscrossing colored beams anticipating later non-objective painting.

Defining characteristics

• Crisscrossing diagonal beams of contrasting color standing in for reflected light rays
• Solid objects dissolved into intersecting fields of energy
• Flattened, shallow space where forms merge with their surroundings
• Vivid, saturated palettes with bold directional brushwork
• Subject matter pushed to the edge of legibility, hovering between figuration and abstraction

Key figures

• Mikhail Larionov (1881-1964) — Cubo-Futurist painter who founded and named Rayonism and wrote its manifesto
• Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962) — Co-founder of Rayonism, who painted some of its purest abstractions from c. 1909

Example works

• Red Rayonism — Mikhail Larionov (1913)
• Cats (Rayonist Perception in Rose, Black and Yellow) — Natalia Goncharova (1913)
• Rayonist Lilies — Natalia Goncharova (1913)

Sources

• Rayonism - WikiArt institution
• Rayonism - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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