Back in 2009 I was contacted by Boris Gorelik regarding one of my favourite artists, Vladimir Tretchikoff. Boris had read a few posts I’d written about notions of good/bad taste and Tretchikoff and wanted to interview me for a book he was writing on the artist (unfortunately I wasn’t able to make the appointment). Four years later, his biography of the man, Incredible Tretchikoff: Life of an Artist and Adventurer, is finally out, published by Art/Books, a small publishing company.

Boris’ book is amazingly the first biography of the artist. Tretchikoff’s partly ghost-written autobiography, Pigeon’s Luck, has been out of print for years, and how much of it is actually true is open to debate, so it’s great to have a biography of Tretchikoff. As it says on the cover of Pigeon’s Luck, his life ‘reads like a thriller’, and I’d still love to see a Technicolour film made of his colourful and extraordinary life.

Buy Incredible Tretchikoff from Amazon.

Previously on Barnflakes
How to Have Taste
Vladimir Tretchikoff: More than Pigeon’s Luck