Russian-born Pavel Tchelitchew never quite fulfilled the hopes of his exalted fan club, which included Gertrude Stein, Edward James and Edith Sitwell. His works, which sometimes flowed with contemporary currents and sometimes against them, were distinguished by an intense engagement with the physicality of his subjects. These studies of heads, produced in the period 1949 to 1952, take this approach to the extreme, rendering the body as a spatial puzzle to be solved in what the artist called “interior landscapes”. A recent monograph covers Tchelitchew’s entire career.
Further reading
Angel
Dress-down Friday: Charles Henri Ford
Circles: Charles Henri Ford
