Russian-born painter, printmaker, draughtsman and scenographer Pavel Tchelitchev is best known for his surrealist compositions combining abstract geometric forms and landscapes superimposed on biomorphic shapes. His work synthesises imagery that is at once mystical, erotic and highly symbolic, exploring the nature of the object, painting and modern life in the 20th century.

Born in 1898 in Kaluga, Russia, into a family of landed gentry, Pavel Tchelitchev received a private education before his family was forced to flee the Russian revolution and take refuge in Kiev in 1918. There he studied with Alexandra Exter at the Kiev Academy. He created theatre sets in Kiev, Odessa and Berlin, before moving to Paris in 1923, where Tchelitchev was welcomed by Gertrude Stein, a central figure in the intellectual milieu of the avant-garde. His work showed Cubist and Surrealist tendencies, and he formed a small group of artists known as the Neo-Humanists, which included André Lanskoy, Christian Bérard and Eugène Berman. He collaborated with Serge Diaghilev and George Balanchine, producing fanciful and metaphysical stage designs. Moving to New York in the early 1930s, he produced illustrations for View magazine, spearheaded by Charles Henri Ford, a friend of Tchelitchev's, and thus contributed to the beginnings of surrealism in the United States. Tchelitchev became known for his portraits and paintings, developed through a complex matrix of symbols and references to the aesthetics of circus culture, bullfighting and anatomical studies of muscular and neurological systems.

Tchelitchev became an American citizen in 1952, but continued to lead an international life, spending much of his time in Italy, France and Germany. His work was included in one of the first exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in 1930, alongside Picasso, Matisse, Miro and Klee. His work can be seen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Courtauld Gallery in London and many other major museums around the world.