Modern and Contemporary Art: Evening Sale
Live Virtual Auction, 1 April 2025
Modern and Contemporary Art: Evening Sale
About this Item
signed and indistinctly dated '49
Notes
Tretchikoff described his style as ‘symbolic realism’. And nowhere was this more prominent than in his flower studies. He first painted flowers in Java, enchanted by the rainbow-like colours
of the cannas in his garden. But his fascination with flowers had probably started much earlier, in the Far East. In Chinese culture, each flower symbolises a quality or idea.
—Boris Gorelik
Vladimir Tretchikoff’s floral compositions with their very distinctive painterly and colourful qualities are often set against a flat surface rendered in somewhat more muted shades.
In the present lot executed in 1948, the artist uses his signature impasto technique creating a sculptural effect with thickly applied red, black, dark blue and yellow paint, dramatically arranged in front of an array of white sword lilies. He offsets this profuse arrangement against a blue and green background creating a balanced composition.
Provenance
Stephan Welz & Co, Cape Town, 6 March 2000, lot 297.
Stephan Welz & Co, Cape Town, 20 October 2009, lot 657.