[1][2] Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova was born on 3 July 1881 (the same year as Larionov, Picasso, and Léger), in Nagaevo (now in the Chernsky District of Tula Oblast).

[3] Her father, Sergey Mikhaylovich Goncharov, was an architect and graduate of the prestigious Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.

They lived in the Orlov and Tula provinces, and soon Goncharova moved to Moscow to pursue the Fourth Women's Gymnasium in 1892, from which she graduated in 1898.

[citation needed] She was accepted by the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in the autumn of 1901, where she studied to become a sculptor under Pavel Trubetskoi, who was associated with the World of Art movement.

[6] It was at the Moscow Institute that Goncharova met fellow-student Mikhail Larionov, and it was not long before they began sharing a studio and living space.

[6][7][8] At the end of the century the gender segregation in the official art institutions was no longer implemented, but still denied women the right to get the diploma upon the completion.

In 1910, a number of students were expelled from Konstantin Korovin's portrait class for imitating the contemporary style of European Modernism, with Goncharova, Larionov, Robert Falk, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Alexander Kuprin, Ilya Mashkov amongst them.

[citation needed] The students rejected from Korovin's classes, and others, soon formed Moscow's first radical independent exhibiting group, the Jack of Diamonds, which was named by Larionov.

Initially preoccupied with icon painting and the primitivism of ethnic Russian folk-art, Goncharova soon began to mix Cubist and Futurist elements in her work, which led to the beginnings of Cubo-Futurism.

Her aesthetic choices that were bridging the Eastern and Western traditions, served as a catalyst for manifestos and art movements at the time.

[citation needed] Even though her pre-World War I art still had problematic associations, her participation in these exhibits were a segue for Moscow's avant-garde blending of both Western European Modernism and Eastern traditions.

Also involved in the project, for which Igor Stravinsky was invited to compose the score, were Larionov and Léonide Massine, but the ballet never materialized.

This art promotes heterogeneity, a blending of multiple cultural traditions, such as West and East and different styles such as Cubism and Futurism.

[17] Between 1922 and 1926, Goncharova created fashion designs for Marie Cuttoli's shop, Maison Myrbor on the Rue Vincent, Paris.

Her richly embroidered and appliquéd dress designs were strongly influenced by Russian folk art, Byzantine mosaic and her work for the Ballets Russes.

)[citation needed] Her early pastels and painting are influenced by the family main estate in Kaluga province, called Polotnianyi Zavod.

[citation needed] She also worked for a famous designer Nadejda Lamonava in Moscow, where her completely artistic expression came to life.

She experimented with abstract design, colors, patterns, different combinations of material, and evidently reacting against the prevailing fashion for Orientalism.

[23] She also designed many costumes for the Ballets Russes, most notably for the company's production of The Golden Cockerel[citation needed] (Le Coq d'Or) and The Firebird.

[37][38] In 2019, a scholar researching the life of the Czech Futurist painter Růžena Zátková found two previously unknown gouaches by Goncharova in a private collection; both the works were dedicated to Zatkova, and were from 1916.