29-05-2025
Tretchikoff triumph: SA's ‘king of kitsch' breaks world record with R31.9 million sale
Vladimir Tretchikoff's painting 'Lady from the Orient' has sold for over $1.7m (R31.9m), setting a new world record.
The 1955 portrait is one of Tretchikoff's most recognisable works, widely reproduced and celebrated for its global popularity.
Known as 'the king of kitsch,' Tretchikoff made history by introducing his art to the masses through affordable reproductions sold worldwide.
A Johannesburg auction house said Wednesday that Vladimir Tretchikoff's iconic painting 'Lady from the Orient' has sold for more than $1.7m, a new world record for the Russia-born South African painter.
The 1955 portrait of a glamorous woman in a green and gold silk gown is among Tretchikoff's most recognisable pieces, reproduced the world over on items such as tablecloths and handbags.
The Strauss & Co auction house said it sold to an anonymous telephone bidder late Tuesday for R31 892 000 (US$1 776 017).
The company said in a statement that the final price, inclusive of commission and taxes, 'comfortably eclipses' the previous world record for a Tretchikoff work, which was £982 050 for 'Chinese Girl' (1952) sold in London in 2013.
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The painting of the daughter of a Cape Town grocer was a particular sensation in 1960s Britain and is among the most famous images produced by Tretchikoff, who moved to Cape Town in 1946 and died there in 2006.
'It was sold as a reproduction in London from 1962, and it was the second-highest selling print in Britain in 1962 and a massive seller in 1963, '64, '65,' senior art specialist at Strauss & Co, Alastair Meredith, told AFP ahead of the auction.
Tretchikoff, whose stylised work - including the famous 'The Dying Swan' (1949) - led some to call him 'the king of kitsch', became wealthy through the reproductions and prints of his pieces.
'Tretchikoff essentially authorised huge numbers of prints of his paintings to be sold at very cheap prices in department stores and stationery shops all around the world,' Meredith said.
'Lady from the Orient' is 'part of South Africa's cultural and visual makeup, part of our country's aesthetic history. But it's also a global icon,' he said.
Tretchikoff was born in what is now Kazakhstan and was then Russia in 1913. He fled with his family to China during the 1917 Russian Revolution and grew up in Shanghai before moving to Singapore and then South Africa.
