Lot 382: PAVEL TCHELITCHEV

PAVEL TCHELITCHEV 1898-1957 THE RUSSIAN SINGER Signed P. Tchelitchew and dated 35 (upper right) Pen and ink on paper 13 by 16 1/2 in. 33 by 41.9 cm Executed in 1935.

New York, Museum of Modern Art, Tchelitchew, 1942, no. 127

Lincoln Kirstein, Pavel Tchelitchew Drawings, New York, 1970, no. 28, p. 18, illustrated

Lincoln Kirstein, New York (acquired directly from the artist)
Private Collection (gifted from the above)
Acquired from the above by the present owner

According to Lincoln Kirstein, The Russian Singer was drawn during the summer of 1935 at Malcesine, Lago di Garda, Italy. It is "one of a large series employing Tchelitchew's 'characteristic perspective,' or several vanishing-points within a single composition, to heighten a sense of precopitation, and to give to each figure the particular foreshortening most evocative or descriptive of its essential character." The figure of the Singer appears in Phenomena, a large oil on canvas previously in the collection of the artist (Lincoln Kirstein, Pavel Tchelitchew Drawings, New York, 1970, p. 18).