Natalia Goncharova, the most expensive female artist in history.

She was born in 1881 in the village of Ladyzhino in the Tula province. Goncharova was a painter, sculptor, and decorator in Diaghilev's ballet troupe. She is considered one of the famous "amazons of the Russian avant-garde."

Natalia Sergeevna was a great-niece of Alexander Pushkin's wife, Natalia Nikolaevna Goncharova.

Her works are worth more than those of any other female artist in the world. For example, on February 2, 2010, at a Christie’s auction in London, her painting "Spanish Woman" (1916) was sold for $10,216,000. Marina Tsvetaeva described her as follows: "How does Natalia Goncharova work? First, always. Second, everywhere. Third, everything. All themes, all sizes, all methods: oil, watercolor, tempera, pastel, pencil, colored pencils, charcoal, all areas of painting... Patiently, calmly, persistently, day by day, stroke by stroke." Goncharova valued the combination of artistic, religious, and patriotic themes in her works: "Religious art that can glorify the state is a beautiful and magical manifestation of art itself."

She commented on her conflicts with censorship: "If I have clashes with society, it is only due to the latter's misunderstanding of the essence of art in general, not because of my individual peculiarities, which no one is obliged to understand." Since 1914, she lived in Paris: "How dear each piece of news from Moscow is to me. You begin to understand the Chinese, who, as they say, sew a handful of earth into the soles of their shoes when leaving home, to always walk on their own land." Natalia Goncharova passed away in Paris on October 17, 1962, and was buried in the cemetery in Ivry-sur-Seine.

After her death, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris organized a major retrospective dedicated to her and Larionov.