Vladimir Grigoryevich Tretchikoff (, 26August 2006) was an artist whose painting Chinese Girl, popularly known as The Green Lady, is one of the best-selling art prints of the twentieth century.
Tretchikoff was a self-taught artist who painted realistic figures, portraits, still life, and animals, with subjects often inspired by his early life in China, Singapore and Indonesia, and later life in South Africa. While his work was immensely popular with the general public, it is often seen by art critics as the epitome of kitsch (indeed, he was nicknamed the "King of Kitsch"). He worked in oil, watercolour, ink, charcoal and pencil but is best known for those works turned into reproduction prints. According to his biographer Boris Gorelik, writing in Incredible Tretchikoff, Upon the Russian Revolution in 1917, the family abandoned their property and fled to Harbin, a city in China with a large Russian presence. Tretchikoff worked as a scene painter at the city's Russian opera house, and went to school until the age of 16. His work as a scene painter may explain why much of his later work is designed to be seen from a distance, and was presented with an inherent theatricality. A year previously, he was commissioned to paint portraits for the boardroom of the Chinese-Eastern Railway, and with the money from this commission he joined the community of Shanghai Russians.
In Shanghai, Tretchikoff worked as an art director and illustrator for Mercury Press, an American-owned advertising and publishing company. At the same time, he contributed cartoons to local Russian and English-language magazines. He met and married Natalie Telpougoff, a fellow Russian émigré. The couple moved to Singapore, where Tretchikoff worked for an advertising agency, gave art lessons, and contributed artwork to the Straits Times. with blue-green skin, is one of the best selling prints of the twentieth century. an account of his wartime experiences. The book was painstakingly researched by Hocking, who contacted people in more than 21 countries. and in May 2008, Fruits of Bali earned $480,000 at Stephan Welz & Co in Cape Town.
In March 2013 Chinese Girl went for nearly £1,000,000 at Bonhams, surpassing the previous record set by Red Jacket, which had fetched £337,250 in October 2012. In May 2025, South African auctioneers Strauss & Co achieved a new record with the sale of Tretchikoff's 1955 portrait Lady from the Orient for R31,892,000 (US$1,776,017 at the time) to an anonymous buyer.
Death and legacy
Tretchikoff suffered a stroke in 2002 that left him unable to paint, and died on 26 August 2006 in Cape Town, his home since 1946. He was survived by his wife Natalie, his daughter Mimi (b. 1938), four granddaughters and five great-grandchildren. Natalie Tretchikoff died on 18 July 2007.
The South African National Gallery never acquired an original Tretchikoff because they did not "really regard Tretchikoff as a South African artist". In Esme Berman's book, Art and Artists of Southern Africa, he is discussed in little more than two lines, under the heading "popular artists". Tretchikoff once said that the only difference between himself and Vincent van Gogh was that Van Gogh had starved whereas he had become rich.
Illusionist Uri Geller is an admirer of Tretchikoff, in spite of agreeing with critics that his is anything but great art. He wrote, "You put a brick in the Tate today and it's art. Who decided that the Green Lady is kitsch? Not the hundreds of thousands who bought it."
Another admirer of Tretchikoff is fashion designer Wayne Hemingway, who compared him to Andy Warhol. In his book, Just Above The Mantelpiece, which defends popular art, he wrote, "He achieved everything that Andy Warhol stated he wanted to do but could never achieve because of his coolness."
Soon after his death the Tretchikoff Trust was established. The Trust hosts workshops for teenagers throughout South Africa. The Trust is based on Tretchikoff's life motto "Express your passion, do whatever you love, take action, no matter what". In 2011, the first Tretchikoff retrospective was held at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town. Curated by Andrew Lamprecht, it proved to be one of the most successful shows in the gallery's history.