‘KITSCH’ ARTIST A HIT AT EATON’S
Critics hated Tretchikoff’s work; customers loved it
In 1965 one of the world’s most successful artists came to Vancouver for an exhibition.
But his paintings weren’t at the Vancouver Art Gallery; they were at Eaton’s department store.
Vladimir Tretchikoff made a fortune selling prints of his work in the ’50s and ’60s, when paintings like Chinese Girl, Dying Swan and Lost Orchid were a staple of middle class living rooms.
He called his style “symbolical realism,” which meant they were realistic to a degree but had exotic touches that were uniquely Tretchikoff-ian. The Chinese Girl, for example, had a blue-green face.
Critics dismissed his paintings, and he dismissed the critics.
“I’ve been told I mislead the public with my art — (that I) give the public what it wants,” he told Ruth Pinkus of The Province on May 8, 1965.
“This is tripe. I don’t give a damn what anyone wants. I paint what, when and how I like. I haven’t had a commission in 15 years.
“I consider critics a bunch of comedians — they make me laugh all the way to the bank.”
To prove his point, he told Pinkus that he had sold 18 original paintings for $50,000 during a three-month cross-Canada tour, including two in Vancouver. But he had made even more money selling prints, $70,000.
The press loved it, dubbing him “the richest painter in the world after Picasso.”
Tretchikoff wasn’t so sure — he thought he might be No. 1.
“I’ve never looked in Picasso’s pocket,” he told Pinkus, “but I’m sure there are more Tretchikoff reproductions around the world than Picassos. In Vancouver there are thousands.”
An estimated 4,000 people per day flocked to the sixth floor of Eaton’s to see his three-week show, which included 50 originals and reproductions of his more famous work that he would sign for anyone who bought one.
Tretchikoff ’s story is so colourful it almost doesn’t seem real — and you suspect that maybe parts of it weren’t.
He was born Vladimir Grigoryevich Tretchikoff in Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan on Dec. 26, 1913. His family were well off, and fled to Harbin, Manchuria (near Vladivostok) after the Russian Revolution in 1917.
Tretchikoff claimed he was commissioned to paint portraits of Chinese railway executives when he was only 16. He then landed a job as a cartoonist at a Shanghai newspaper, where he wed another young Russian refugee.
In 1935, he became a cartoonist for a paper in Singapore, and later became a propaganda artist for the British. When the Japanese invaded Singapore in 1941, his wife and daughter got away safely, but Tretchikoff was placed on a later boat and it was torpedoed.
Tretchikoff was in a lifeboat that was at sea for 21 days before reaching land at Java, where he was arrested by the Japanese. After three months in solitary confinement he was released because he was Russian.
He’d had some success as a painter before the war — his work had been shown at the New York World’s Fair — and he spent the war years perfecting his style.
His main model was an exotic half-Malaysian, half-Dutch woman who became his mistress. But he left her after the war ended and he discovered his wife and daughter were in Cape Town, South Africa, where he emigrated in 1946.
His first South African exhibition in 1948 was a huge success.
“Twelve thousand people swarmed to his first show,” said The Sun’s Don Stainsby in 1955. “A year later in Cape Town 30,000 went to see his work and a third exhibit drew 61,000.”
His first Vancouver show opened at Eaton’s on April 16, 1955, at the end of a two-and-a-half-year North American tour. His most popular print was Chinese Girl, which he painted in Cape Town in 1950. It’s been called “the Mona Lisa of Kitsch,” and sold millions of copies.
The peak of his career was probably 1961, when he had a show at Harrods department store in London that drew 200,000 visitors. His star faded by the ’80s, and he died in 2006 at the age of 92. But many people still covet vintage Tretchikoff prints — a quick search on eBay found Tretchikoffs selling for between $35 to $1,500.
His original oil paintings are also prized by collectors. The original painting of Chinese Girl sold for almost a million pounds (about $1.6 million) at a Bonham’s Auction in London in 2013.