HAND SIGNED Vladimir Tretchikoff ( 1913- 2006 ) Indonesian Cock -Fighter, c. 1943

Hand Signed by Tretchikoff. 

Print is 31 cm x 23 cm. In an attractive red mount and solid wooden frame. All in excellent condition.

Frame is 42 cm x 34 cm. 

Vladimir Tretchikoff found himself in Indonesia during World War II , then occupied by the Japanese. He was living in Singapore and working as an artist, but had to escape the Japanese advance by ship. The ship was torpedoed and he and other members of the rowed to Indonesia where they were interned. Eventually he was released but the Japanese would not let him leave Java. Whilst there, he managed to get access to art supplies from a local Dutch art teacher, and this was the first of his Indonesian paintings finished circa 1943. The figure depicted is the Indonesian servant of his friend, the Dutch art teacher. This man was a passionate cock-fighter. He is posing with a rooster in one hand and betting money in the other.

Tretchikoff wanted to paint something typically Javanese, and became fascinated by the sport of cock-fighting, which became an abiding theme for him. Years later in the mid-1960s, a print of his of two cocks fighting became one of the best selling prints in Britain.

The double entendre here is deliberate, wrote anthropolgist Clifford Geeritz, who studied cockfighting in Bali. It works exactly the same way in Balinese as it does in English, even to producing the same tired jokes, strained puns and uninventive obscenities

( from the book Incredible Tretchikoff by Boris Gorelik )