Doomed City from Mystical Images of War
Natalia Goncharova French, born Russia
Printer T-va I. N. Kushnerev i Ko.
Publisher V. Kashin Russian
Not on view
One of the earliest artistic responses to the war, Goncharova’s print series combines reflections on contemporary events, religious parables, and an apocalypse foretold (a number of scenes are derived from a seventeenth-century Russian Bible’s portrayal of Revelations). The final image, for instance, shows Christ triumphantly rising over a battlefield’s mass grave in anticipation of the dead’s ascension. Doomed City—in which angels less benign than those in Christian Host hurl boulders at a town below—also has a Biblical source. Although the scene is filled with contemporary buildings and factories (indicated by the smokestacks in the background), the title and events evoke the Old Testament destruction of the wicked and condemned city of Babylon.
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