20 november 2006 - 31 january 2007
Pavel Tchelitchew

Descended from an old family of the Russian nobility, Pavel Tchelitchew (1898–1957) is a classic of twentieth-century modernism. In his youth, he brilliantly assimilated the lessons of Cubo-Futurism. In the 1920s and early 1930s, he demonstrated his talent as a lyrical painter and portraitist, occupying his own special place in the École de Paris. Moving to America in 1934, he painted a series of pictures that are now classics of Surrealism. Regarding mysticism as the basis of the spiritual world, the artist painted a number of metaphysical compositions, employing the symbolics of signs and the abstracted language of geometry.
Pavel Tchelitchew’s art is refined, spiritual and romantic. The fans of his talent included the famous writer and collector Gertrude Stein, English poetess Edith Sitwell, choreographer George Balanchine, conductor Igor Markevitch, composer Igor Stravinsky and other members of the cultural elite. Tchelitchew’s works are now exhibited in such famous institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Tate Gallery in London.
The exhibition at the Nashi Khudozhniki Gallery is Pavel Tchelitchew’s first ever one-man show in his former homeland of Russia. The display of over fifty works has been collated from private collections in Moscow, St Petersburg and London. Painted in the 1920s and 1930s, the exhibits include Basket of Strawberries (acquired by Gertrude Stein at the Salon d’Automne in 1925), such Surrealist masterpieces as Phenomena (from the permanent exhibition of the Tretyakov Gallery) and abstract works from the artist’s later period.