Pavel Tchelitchew

Galerie Lucie Weill, Paris

Sotheby's, London, Neo-Romantic & Surrealist Art from the Collection of Pierre Le-Tan, 25 October 1995, lot 114

Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

(Possibly) Paris, Galerie Lucie Weill, Hommage à Tchelitchew, 1966, no. 13 (titled Composition)

In the catalogue of Tchelitchew's solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art James Thrall Soby refers to the present lot as the third of four single figure compositions which the artist executed in the early 1930s: "The same arbitrary foreshortening and enlargement are found in the third picture of the still-life figure series, a Neo-Classic scene in which a figure with an enormous plaster hand faces a column with classic bust" (Tchelitchew, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1942, p. 21).

The portraits in this small series are constructed from the sometimes humorous juxtapositions of inanimate component parts in the manner of the Milanese mannerist painter Arcimboldo, such as the wry use of an oil radiator as a stand-in for a fluted classical pillar, but the unsettling atmosphere and eerie sense of silence have more in common with de Chirico. The oversized plaster hands which were to become a recurring motif make their first appearance in these works and are a direct reference to the Surrealist artist, as is the head of Apollo. Parker Tyler refers to the metaphysical vein, influenced by de Chirico, which runs through Tchelitchew’s work at this time, "this vein compasses only the artist’s portraits natures mortes in which live beings are hallucinated with sculpture and furniture props and pictures-within-pictures" (P.Tyler, The Divine Comedy of Pavel Tchelitchew, p.304).

The majority of the sitters for this series were dancers and circus performers, such as Harald Kreutzberg who partnered Edward James’s wife Tilly Losch, often wearing stage make-up and the cloth cap worn by performers under wigs.