A lot-loved Russian-born Cape City painter Vladimir Tretchikoff’s Balinese Lady, an absorbing portrait of a younger Indonesian lady in conventional costume, regarded as painted circa 1954-56, offered to a phone purchaser at Strauss & Co’s sale of recent and modern artwork for R5 718 750, a brand new South African document.
Earlier on Tuesday, all 48 works in a sale dedicated to Calitzdorp artist-potter Hylton Nel offered, attaining what within the auction-world parlance is known as a white-glove sale.
Nel’s works steadily offered at costs nicely in extra of the pre-sale estimates. A pair of cats on yellow bases earned the highest worth, promoting for R234 500.
The Tretchikoff public sale document confirmed on-going demand for the artist, who died at age 92 in 2006.
Finest identified for his vivid portraiture and canny advertising and marketing methods that prefigured Pop artwork, Tretchikoff’s Balinese Lady derives from the artist’s basic interval, when he originated such iconic works as Chinese language Lady (1952) and Girl from Orient (1955) in his Cape City studio.
Vladimir Tretchikoff settled in Cape City in 1946.
