Pavel Tchelitchew

In late 1923 Tchelitchew arrived in Paris with his partner Allen Tanner, a young American pianist he had met in Berlin. In Berlin, Tchelitchew had devoted much of his time to theatre design and was working in a style which was still very much influenced by Alexandra Exter, his teacher in Kiev. Tchelitchew now turned to painting and drawing, and his Paris period would prove crucial for his development as an artist. The year 1925 in particular was a turning point, when he abandoned bright colours in favour of a much more muted palette, and in his words ‘threw away all but black, white, ochre, natural and burnt umber’ (J.T. Soby, Tchelitchew: Paintings, Drawings, 1942, p.14).

Tchelitchew also started experimenting with simultaneity – the combination of multiple aspects of a single image – a technique first explored by Picasso in his portraits characterised by the superimposition of profiles with frontal views. Tchelitchew’s experimentation extended from the head and face to the human body, eventually evolving into what he labelled the system of ‘laconic’ composition. ‘It consisted in supplying for several figures, contiguous in head and torso, a common set or sets of legs and arms, fewer in number than the figures would normally have, but so arranged that each figure seems complete’ (Tchelitchew, New York, 1964, p.14)

In 1927 Tchelitchew began to apply a relief texture to his painting. The combination of sand, coffee-grounds, and paint was used in other paintings from this period. 'At times (...) he piled up so heavy a texture that, in [Tchelitchew's] words, "The surface of my paintings looked like maps of earth in low relief."' (J.T. Soby, Tchelitchew: Paintings, Drawings, 1942, p.17). Executed in 1927-1928, The Lovers is an exquisite example of Tchelitchew's Parisian period, marked by experimentation with new materials and working technique, as well as his startling achievements with 'laconic' composition.