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1898-1957
ACROBAT

measurements
36 by 28 3/4 in.

alternate measurements
91.5 by 73 cm

oil and sand on canvas

PROVENANCE

The Arthur Jeffress Gallery, London
Sotheby's, London, July 4, 1962, lot 254
Grosvenor Gallery, London
Sotheby's, London, April 13, 1972, lot 79
Sotheby's, London November 30, 1988, lot 184
Sotheby's, London, The Pierre Le Tan Collection, October 25, 1995, lot 4

EXHIBITED

Chalon-sur-Saône, 1994, illustrated in color in the catalogue

NOTE

Painted circa 1927.

During the period 1927 to 1933, Tchelitchew was preoccupied with circus-related themes, inspired primarily by Picasso's works of 1904-5, which Tchelitchew had seen in Gertude Stein's apartment in Paris. Tchelitchew's works portrayed the heroic isolation of dancers, clowns and circus performers, rendered in an abstracted plane of existence. This work relates to Tchelitchew's Blue Acrobat of 1927, both in terms of style and composition, where a faceless acrobat carries a hoop (James Thrall Soby, Pavel Tchelitchew, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1942, p. 42, pl. 11).