Vladimir Tretchikoff

Vladimir Tretchikoff (born December 13 [December 26, New Style], 1913, Petropavlovsk, Siberia, Russia [now in Kazakhstan]—died August 26, 2006, Cape Town, South Africa) was a Russian-born South African artist. He was a popular self-taught painter who was known as “the king of kitsch”—although his many fans compared his often garishly colored art to Andy Warhol’s.

Tretchikoff escaped with his family from Russia in the wake of the Revolution of 1917, and they eventually settled in Harbin, China. He spent the early 1930s in Shanghai, where he found a job in advertising and contributed graphic artwork to newspapers and magazines. By 1935 he had settled in Singapore, where he continued his advertising career and produced illustrations for The Straits Times. Tretchikoff also collaborated with the British Ministry of Information, designing anti-Axis propaganda at the outset of World War II. During the 1942 invasion of Singapore by Japan, he was evacuated. However, the boat on which he and some 300 others were fleeing was sunk by Japanese military ships in the open sea. Tretchikoff and the few other survivors were forced to row for 21 days to Java, where they were interned by Japanese forces. After a few months Tretchikoff was released, and he spent the rest of World War II in Batavia (now Jakarta), devoting himself to painting.

In 1946 Tretchikoff moved to South Africa, where he had his first art exhibition two years later. His early paintings include floral still lifes and vivid portraits of women, subjects that remained predominant throughout his career; he considered such works examples of “symbolic realism.” Despite finding little favor with the art establishment, Tretchikoff’s work was frequently displayed over the next three decades, typically at department stores rather than dedicated art galleries. Highly successful showings in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom extended his popularity, with a 1961 exhibition at Harrods of London attracting more than 200,000 visitors. As well, his painting Chinese Girl (1952)—which depicts an exotically dressed woman of Asian descent with a pensive expression and bluish green skin—became one of the most-reproduced artworks of the mid-20th century, particularly in South Africa and other Commonwealth countries. Indeed, the widespread availability of reproductions of his work led to sales during his lifetime that made him one of the wealthiest artists in the world.

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