Владимир Третчиков: Қазақстанда туған суретшінің өмірі мен шығармашылығы

Russian painter

Vladimir Grigoryevich Tretchikoff (Владимир Григорьевич Третчиков, 26 December 1913 [O. S. 13 December 1913], Petropavlovsk, Russian Empire, now Petropavl in Kazakhstan – 26 August 2006, Cape Town, South Africa) was an artist whose painting Chinese Girl, popularly known as The Green Lady, is one of the best selling art prints of the twentieth century. Tretchikoff was a self taught artist who painted realistic figures, portraits, still life, and animals, with subjects often inspired by his early life in China, Singapore and Indonesia, and later life in South Africa. While his work was immensely popular with the general public, it is often seen by art critics as the epitome of kitsch (indeed, he was nicknamed the "King of Kitsch"). He worked in oil, watercolour, ink, charcoal and pencil but is best known for those works turned into reproduction prints. According to his biographer Boris Gorelik, writing in Incredible Tretchikoff, A year previously, he was commissioned to paint portraits for the boardroom of the Chinese Eastern Railway, and with the money from this commission he joined the community of Shanghai Russians. In Shanghai, Tretchikoff worked as an art director and illustrator for Mercury Press, an American owned advertising and publishing company. At the same time, he contributed cartoons to local Russian and English language magazines. He met and married Natalie Telpougoff, a fellow Russian émigré. The couple moved to Singapore, where Tretchikoff worked for an advertising agency, gave art lessons, and contributed artwork to the Straits Times. with blue green skin, is one of the best selling prints of the twentieth century. an account of his wartime experiences. The book was painstakingly researched by Hocking, who contacted people in more than 21 countries. and in May 2008, Fruits of Bali earned $480,000 at Stephan Welz & Co in Cape Town. The most expensive Tretchikoff painting to date is Chinese Girl which went for nearly £1,000,000 at Bonhams, London in March 2013. The previous record was Red Jacket, which fetched £337,250 in October 2012, also at Bonhams.

Tretchikoff suffered a stroke in 2002 that left him unable to paint, and died on 26 August 2006 in Cape Town, his home since 1946. He was survived by his wife Natalie, his daughter Mimi (b. 1938), four granddaughters and five great grandchildren. Natalie Tretchikoff died on 18 July 2007. The South African National Gallery never acquired an original Tretchikoff because they did not "really regard Tretchikoff as a South African artist". In Esme Berman's book, Art and Artists of Southern Africa, he is discussed in little more than two lines, under the heading "popular artists". Tretchikoff once said that the only difference between himself and Vincent van Gogh was that Van Gogh had starved whereas he had become rich. Illusionist Uri Geller is an admirer of Tretchikoff, in spite of agreeing with critics that his is anything but great art. He wrote, "You put a brick in the Tate today and it's art. Who decided that the Green Lady is kitsch? Not the hundreds of thousands who bought it." Another admirer of Tretchikoff is fashion designer Wayne Hemingway, who compared him to Andy Warhol. In his book, Just Above The Mantelpiece, which defends popular art, he wrote, "He achieved everything that Andy Warhol stated he wanted to do but could never achieve because of his coolness." Soon after his death the Tretchikoff Trust was established. The Trust hosts workshops for teenagers throughout South Africa. The Trust is based on Tretchikoff's life motto "Express your passion, do whatever you love, take action, no matter what". In 2011, the first Tretchikoff retrospective was held at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town. Curated by Andrew Lamprecht, it proved to be one of the most successful shows in the gallery's history.

A 1998 South African documentary, Red Jacket, was made about Tretchikoff.