One of the Russian avant-garde movements that proliferated in Moscow and St Petersburg in the years from about 1910¿20. It was the invention of Michel Larionov and his partner Natalya Goncharova in 1912. Rayonism, or Rayism, was an early form of abstract art, based on landscape and consisting of dynamically interacting linear forms ultimately derived from rays of light. Of his Rayonist painting Nocturne Larionov later wrote: 'This painting was inspired by the dusk at Odessa. It is a problem of the combination of staircases, interiors and exteriors of houses and represents the pressure of the body of dark colours on the semi-light tones. The problem of this painting is to organise these tones in a certain order. It is the conflict of the semi-light rays with the dark rays.'