Vladimir Tretchikoff passed away in Cape Town last week. Born in Russia on December 13 1913, he fled to Manchuria to escape the 1917 revolution when he was just four and was orphaned by the time he was 11. He was later educated at Manchuria College and although he longed to study art in Paris, this was not to be. Instead, he became a self-taught artist and supported himself from an early age. In 1935 he married Natalie, his wife for more than 70 years.
Tretchikoff’s most famous painting, Chinese Girl (1952), holds the record of being the biggest selling print of all time. The Dying Swan, Zulu Girl, Birth of Venus and Lost Orchid were also very well known.
In 1941, he worked on propaganda for the British Ministry of Information in Singapore. A week before Singapore fell to the Japanese his wife and daughter were evacuated to an unknown destination. Tretchikoff escaped a few days later, but his ship was torpedoed and he was listed as “missing, presumed dead”. He spent 23 days in an open lifeboat before landing in Java where he was immediately imprisoned in solitary confinement, but released three months later on parole when the Japanese could pin no crime on him.
Two events in Jakarta shaped those war years. A Dutch benefactor made it possible for him to concentrate on his art and he created some of his best work during this time. As word of his skill spread, he grew in demand as a portrait painter. Thus he met the beautiful Lenka, who became his model, muse and mistress. At the end of the war, she helped him trace his family via the Red Cross. With heavy hearts and tears they parted.
His arrival in 1946 in Cape Town to be reunited with his wife and child was overshadowed by his wife’s instinctive knowledge that there was someone else in his life. But the war was over, he was a penniless artist with a wife and child to support, so he channelled all his energies into his work.
Tretchikoff’s first exhibition held in 1948, was an outstanding success. That same year saw the beginning of apartheid, which effectively put paid to any chance of Lenka visiting him as he would not risk exposing her to the degradation of the race laws.
His work reflected the people of South Africa, Cape Town in particular, including the city’s Malay brides, colourful herbalists, flower sellers, fishermen and pennywhistlers. The art was well documented and records a period of life after the drabness of the war years when people were striving for a brighter existence.
Art was entering a new phase in South Africa and 1948 saw the first overseas exhibition of South African art at the Tate Gallery. It came as something of a surprise to the overseas public that South Africa had any art at all. Critics were courteous, but implied with various degrees of diplomacy that little more had been achieved than a watered-down echo of European movements in art.
It was exactly at this period that Tretchikoff began to be recognised locally and, shortly thereafter, internationally. In whichever part of the world he exhibited there were record crowds and record sales.
The opposition to Tretchikoff’s work in South Africa by critics and the art fraternity was to a large extent based on jealousy. He did not epitomise the “starving artist myth”, rather he “laughed all the way to the bank”.
He was not interested in politics. He merely observed life around him and this gave him a keen social awareness and fascination of the extraordinary contrasts and varieties inherent in the South African social scene.
His painting entitled Black and White embroiled him in a sea of contention as newspapers across the globe carried the story. Coming from an artist with South African nationality, it was inevitably seen as an attack on apartheid and a deliberate snub to the government. Again, he was not making political comment, merely reflecting two different cultures together — a microcosm of life in South Africa. Encyclopaedia Britannica used it as an illustration on apartheid.
Whether one thinks of Tretchikoff’s art as kitsch, one has to admit that he was a phenomenal and outstanding success. There are many examples of his vibrant and colourful work available today and one cannot deny that he was a classical artist in the truest sense of the term. He painted from the heart and there was a purity and intrinsic honesty in his work. His vivid images seemed alive enough to leap out of the canvas and captivate the viewer.
He played a very important though controversial part in the history of art in this country and was recognised and feted internationally. Criticism of Tretchikoff has come full circle. He is still heatedly discussed and his work is in great demand and fetches increasingly high prices on auction. “In an ideal world and with a big budget we would possibly consider a Tretchikoff. The miniscule budget we receive must be used on contemporary South African artists.” What a shame this attitude of the National Gallery has persisted for more than half a century. But then it was always a handful of critics and the art fraternity who dictated what the public should be thinking.
Critics have passed on, and were soon forgotten. Tretchikoff’s work is alive and well and still provoking controversy. The artist has passed on, but his memory will live through his art which gave enormous pleasure to so many.
Over the years Tretchikoff and Lenka never lost touch. They met in London when he was at the pinnacle of his success. But it was only after the last bastions of apartheid fell, when the ANC came into power, that she and Tretchikoff were re-united in Cape Town. Both his wife and Lenka are still alive.
He is survived by his wife Natalie, daughter Mimi, four granddaughters and four great-grandchildren.
Vladimir Tretchikoff was born on December 13 1913 and died on August 25 2006