Notes

Boris Gorelik writes:

"Another result of Tretchikoff's visits to Namibia was this work, his best-known and most expensive foray into sculpture.

In fact, he received his first piece of publicity as a sculptor. It was in China in the 1920s, when the teenage Tretchikoff modelled a female figure from sand on a beach, and a photograph of him and his work appeared in the press.

In 1971, the artist tried his hand at sculpture again. A rich man’s sculpture, that is.

Ben du Preez, an art collector friend of Tretchikoff’s in Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, presented him with many valuable gemstones, including a twenty-two-kilogram rock of pure deep-purple amethyst. The shape of the stone reminded the artist of a fish’s body, with crystals as its scales.

Tretchikoff designed the head, tail and fins keeping in mind a golden mask he had seen at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. ‘What is good enough for Tutankhamen’, he said, ‘is good enough for my fish.’ As he was unable to obtain gold bullions in Cape Town, he had a professional jeweller, Otello Pappadà, coat the attached parts in the melted-down Krugerrands.

The sculpture rests on a solid base of green fluorspar.

This unlikely precursor to Damien Hirst’s stab at exorbitant sculpture (For the Love of God) was first displayed during Tretchikoff’s exhibition at Birmingham in 1972".

Provenance

The Tretchikoff Family Private Collection