Tretchikoff’s work returns to Cape Town

PHOTOS: Tretchikoff Foundation |  WORDS: Alma Viviers

Vladimir Tretchikoff’s Chinese Girl – said to be one of the most reproduced images in the world – has returned to South Africa.

Vladimir Tretchikoff held 52 exhibitions in his career – in South Africa, the United Kingdom, United States and Canada – many of them in upmarket department stores such as Harrods in London.

The Russian-born painter, who made South Africa his home after World War II, took art out of the galleries, to where the general public were, and made it affordable by offering reproductions of his work – a revolution at the time.

Yet despite, or perhaps because of his widespread popularity, Tretchikoff ’s work was relegated to the ranks of kitsch – and the South African National Gallery never acquired an original painting.

This year, it’s really a homecoming of sorts when the first-ever major retrospective of Vladimir Tretchikoff opens at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town on 26 May.

“To date, he has not been acknowledged by the arts establishment,” says Natasha Swift, director of the Tretchikoff Foundation and granddaughter of the artist. “In fact there has been no scholarly assessment of Tretchikoff and the time has come for a critical retrospective assessment of the artist’s work.”

Insights, criticisms and enthusiasm

Curator of the exhibition, Andrew Lamprecht concurs: “Very few people today have had a chance to see, en masse, a representative sampling of Tretchikoff ’s originals in one place. I am expecting insights, criticisms and enthusiasm of a different sort to that which existed when he showed in department stores.

“I certainly recognise his popular appeal but at the same time I wish to situate him within a fine arts context, perhaps for the first time.”

VISI is certain that Tretchikoff ’s vibrant works will have a whole new generation of art lovers scratching for dusty prints in the attic, or frantically bidding at auctions.

The exhibition closes on 25 September 2011.

• Iziko South African National Gallery, Government Avenue, Cape Town, 021 467 4660, www.iziko.org.za