Vladimir Tretchikoff

Vladimir Tretchikoff (Russian: Владимир Григорьевич Третчиков transcribed Vladimir Grigoryevich Trettschikow; born 13 December 1913 in Petropavlovsk, Russian Empire; † August 26, 2006 in Cape Town, South Africa) was a Russian painter.

Life

Trettschikow fled after the October Revolution in Russia with his family to Manchuria. He later lived in Shanghai and Singapore.

His wife Natalie and daughter Mimi in 1941, evacuated due to the advancing Japanese army during the Second World War to Cape Town. Tretchikoff himself lived at this time in Jakarta and began an affair with his later model Leonora Schmidt- Salomonson aka Lenka.

In 1946 he returned to his family back to South Africa. He died there on 26 August 2006 to the consequences of stroke.

Career

Trettschikow was a painter and painted portraits, still life and animals. His work has been primarily known worldwide reproductions and reached sales figures like Picasso reprints. His most famous work is "The Chinese Girl", a portrait of the then 17 -year-old Chinese girl Monika Sing- Lee, married Pon, which he painted in Cape Town in 1952. This image is one of the reprints world's most sold, and there was in 2013 sold for nearly $ 1.5 million. Because of its rather kitsch, commercially influenced works he was often criticized and received no awards for his work.